Category: Cats

last caturday in april 2022

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Two gingers lounging on one of the dog beds. The bed is big enough for one of the two dogs, one fourteen-year-old female Yellow Lab and the other a seven-year-old female Black Doodle. Big dogs. Yet the cats have discovered that they too can lounge about on the dog beds and the dogs won’t bother them. In this instance Beau is lying across the top, while Nicholas lies next to him across the bottom corner.

There are a number of observations in this small photograph.

  1. Nicholas, at 10 months, is as long as Beau at 6 1/2 years. I don’t know how much Nicholas weighs, but I’m sure it’s close to Beau. When Nicholas finally grows up, he’s going to be one big ginger, maybe the biggest of the three males.
  2. That orange ball in the lower left corner is one of Nicholas’ play toys. It was originally a dog toy, and the dogs still like to play with it. So now does Nicholas. He’ll bat it around the floor and chase after it. My wife has even told me she’s watched Nicholas lie on his back and hold the ball in his forelegs. I have yet to see that. I can’t wait.
  3. All the cats have discovered that the dog beds are great to lie on, and they’ll gather together in groups of up to three on one bed. I suppose if I had a hookah close by they’d fill it with catnip and use that too while lounging.

It’s never a dull moment around here.

beau on the cuisinart

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The Beau Man is ensconced on top of a blanket on top of my Cuisinart convection bread maker gazing out the kitchen window. My wife got the Cuisinart for me in 2020, at the start of the serious pandemic lockdown. I baked a few loaves with it, and then cleaned it up from the last loaf and just let it sit there. I put the blanket on top in part to keep it clean, in part to make it comfortable for the cats. As you can see with Beau. His tail is draped across the Cuisinart ice cream maker.

I don’t normally buy kitchen appliances as cat furniture, but that’s how it’s turned out. I need to get back into using both, especially the bread maker. I’ve found some new bread recipes I want to try out. I’m also cleaning up the kitchen to find a better spot for those when they’re not in use, instead of permanently on the kitchen table.

The photo was taken with my iPhone 11 Pro Max as that was all I had when this moment suddenly presented itself. Normally I try to keep the Olympus close at hand, but I’d left it in the dining room while I charged one of its batteries. I’m not a pixel peeper, but I don’t have to enlarge the image very far before I begin to see the “crunchiness” noise that Apple’s camera software imparts to the image due to its “computational” photography. I used the telephoto lens to zoom into the subject, which meant I was using the 6mm lens at f/2 with an ISO of 400. On that tiny sensor that’s pretty bad. I know I’m supposed to stand in awe of all Apple’s Photos by iPhone advertising, but I don’t. I’m not stupid about what the camera will and won’t do. The iPhone is great under very controlled conditions, one of which is sufficient light, usually at the strength of daylight, whether indoors via artificial light or outside in sunlight (shaded or direct). But under conditions such as my darkened kitchen, not so much. I am glad I captured the moment, because it does mean something to me. But still…

I capture these moments because I know that one day Beau will be gone. All creatures have a beginning and an ending. I need to make sure to appreciate as many moments as I possibly can. Retirement affords me the ability to spend far more time with them than I ever could when I was working and commuting. Time is finite and fleeting. Live all the moments left to you that you possibly can.