Tag: orange tabby

Reaching for the Light

Our cat Sam relaxing in a heated cat bed with one arm sticking out towards a lamp

A picture of Sam from the fall of 2009 that I just got around to editing. My office received a makeover last year and a requirement of the new layout was that I still have a place for the three heated cat beds, as the pets frequently hang out in my office. I ended up putting a couch where his bed was in this picture and a low table beside the couch for the heated beds. He is sleeping in one of the beds now, but it is the one that Scout considered to be her own rather than this one. He and Emma both preferred Scout’s over the other two, and if they were in it when she wanted it, she’d come to me and ask me to evict them.

All three beds are from the same company but were bought at different times and are each slightly different. Scout’s bed is an older design that we bought when Templeton was still alive, I think its the best design of the three and the cats apparently agree. We’ve searched in vain to find a couple more but have only been able to find the newer models. Now that Scout has passed away, as long as Sam and Emma each seem happy in the other two beds, I’ll remove this little one even though it made for more interesting pictures, as because of its smaller size they were more likely to have their legs and feet sticking out of it.

Suddenly Salmonny Sam

Our cat Sam looks out from his heated cat bed in May 2012

Sam and Emma get a serving of Tiki Cat wet food in the mornings. We’ve alternated flavors over the years, sometimes even getting a variety pack where they get a new flavor every couple of days. That was all good and well but now they’re hooked on Wild Salmon and won’t touch anything else. Emma I can kind of understand, she’s always been a bit picky, but little Samwise was a surprise as he’ll eat anything that isn’t a vegetable.

If they ever discontinue Wild Salmon, may God have mercy on our souls.

The Comforter Has Come

Our cat Sam sleeps next to our cat Scout on the love seat in our house in Portland, Oregon on July 4, 2012. Original: _MG_2747.CR2

Sam lay beside me on the loveseat, too agitated by the 4th of July fireworks to sleep. Scout came in but walked past her normal spot in my lap or her cat bed and instead lay down beside him. Sam immediately curled into a ball and fell into a deep sleep, safe and secure in his sister’s shadow. Sleep wouldn’t come so easily for Scout, but hours later exhaustion took hold and she too fell asleep.

Soon sleep beckoned me as well and I walked to the bedroom with the darkness murmuring at my feet. The murmurs jumped onto the bed as I approached and I eased myself under the covers so as not to crush them. As Sam and Scout curled up on me the murmurs turned to purrs, the purrs to silence, and at last we all were at rest.

The Throne of Kings

Our cat Sam resting on my recliner in February 2012

All the men of the house have loved this chair.

We got it for my office after we moved to Portland and it has been the place I sit most ever since. Templeton liked it too in his day, and now Sam in his. I sat in it a lot the past couple of months as I recuperated from a twisted ankle. The worst part is, I don’t even know how I injured it.

When I explained to Ellie that hedgehogging was temporarily on hold, I expected her to be crestfallen, but instead she got strangely excited and her eyes grew wide. “Put him in the cage!” she shouted to the cats. “Put him in the cage!” they cried. “Put him in the cage!” they shouted as they circled round me. I escaped incarceration from my would-be jailers with a heavy bribe of belly rubs and head scratches and was able to serve my time under general house arrest.

The Orange Thief & the Angry Queen

Our cat Sam looks out from one of the cat beds in my office

We have three heated cat beds in my office, one for each of the cats, but Scout has one she considers hers and spends much of the day sleeping in it. The other cats pay their obeisance to the queen and leave the bed for her, mostly, but Sam does occasionally go through moods where he claims it for his own. I don’t think it’s a power play, partially because that’s not his personality, partially because sometimes he tries to climb in with Scout. They are both small cats but it’s a small bed too, not a bed for a small two.

If Sam takes the bed while Scout’s away, when she returns she sits beside the bed and gives him the evil eye while he pretends not to see her. When the evil eye doesn’t work, and it never does, Scout comes over to me and starts giving me the business until I go and evict him.

When we discovered her bed was no longer heating up, I struggled with whether or not I should switch it for one of the others. Scout more than any of our cats living or past is a slave to her routine. One night I decided to try an experiment and switched her bed with one a few feet away on the desk. I knew she wouldn’t like it at first but I figured with a little time the electric warmth would overcome her objections.

How wrong I was!

I made the switch in the early evening and immediately Scout started haranguing and harassing me, sometimes vocally, sometimes by repeatedly head butting me and walking across my laptop. Hour after hour I resisted but she broke me in the wee hours of the morning and I switched the beds back. Before I could even sit down she had hopped in and curled up to sleep.

At last we both had our rest.

Captured

Our cat Sam sleeping in his heated bed

A long-standing but unfulfilled desire of mine is a small portable camera, an always-with-you camera, the camera that captures those quick fleeting moments that as pictures are more important than they are great, the slices that over time tell the little stories of your life. The iPhone 4 fills this roll for me at the moment, not because I think it’s well-suited to the task but because it’s what I have.

The four pictures from the previous two posts of a snuggling Sam on my lap were taken with my iPhone because I had it near at hand. My Canon 7D wasn’t that far away but out of arms reach and besides had the big lens attached, so I had to choose between getting the camera and getting the picture.

The two pictures here of a slumbering Sam were taken with the 7D. I started out photographing him with the iPhone but in this case I was able to get and setup the bigger camera, as instead of my lap he was snuggled up either in his warm bed or my chair. Much better image quality with the big camera, but the best camera is the camera you have with you, and thus I keep casting my eyes about for a small camera that strikes the right balance between portability and quality. And within the past few months a whole slew of interesting models have come to market.

I don’t know if I’ll get a smaller camera or make do with what I have, but perhaps I shouldn’t delay my decision too long. I’ve been watching this documentary that chronicles a traveling time lord who takes people on grand adventures across time and space. Maybe I’ll get to go back in time and photograph Templeton when he was a kitten!

I am beginning to despair that he will show up on my doorstep, however, as I’ve noticed that he prefers young English women as his companions, and I fail on all three counts.

Come on, Doctor!

Our cat Sam sleeps on my recliner

Happiness is a Hidey-hole

Our cat Sam sleeps under some daisies in our backyard

We have a patch of daisies in the backyard that don’t quite get as much sun as they should but I leave them where they are as they are in a good location for insect pictures. I tie them up after they bloom as otherwise they fall over searching for more sunlight, but an unusually heavy downpour this summer knocked them over despite my efforts. Since we didn’t get many insects on the daisies this year, after they fell I was going to cut them down until I realized another creature had taken up residence underneath their canopy.