Chrissy The Cat Ain't A Happy Camper

My dad and step-mother's cat, Chrissy, likes to sleep underneath their bed's covers. She'll spend some time outside watching her fenced in territory, the back yard, making sure squirrels and birds don't dare try to take over her domain, even if in just passing. Sometimes she sits back deep in the bushes, hiding so much so you can't even see where she is since it's pitch black in those deep-seated bushes and she's as black as coal.

But, my step-mother once told me, "Sometimes you can see her yellow eyes peering through the darkness."

Chrissy has gorgeous yellow and black eyes. She is THE perfect looking Halloween cat.

So, the other day, I go by their house for a visit and I have my camera along with me, the Nikon D700 digital SLR, with the 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor auto focus lens attached to it. After looking for Chrissy, with my camera at the ready, my step-mother told me that Chrissy was in the bedroom sleeping.

Now I don't think Chrissy doesn't exactly hate me for taking photos of her but I do know she's not that fond of it either. Most of the time she will put up with it and at times has seemed to not care one bit, but, on this particular day, she obviously wasn't too happy with me.

Why? Well, it was quite simple. She was sound asleep, having kitty cat dreams, under the top cover of my dad and step-mother's bed and I walked in there and put my hands on the bulge in the bed cover, with a little squeeze of love added, of course, and then I lifted the cover away a bit and found her chilled out (see first photo), possibly groggy from her sudden shift from deep sleep to conscious reality and knowing the person who just woke her up probably intended on aiming that weird looking contraption at her and saying things like, "Shit, focus already, you slow ass m-fer!" or "DAMMIT, WHY WON'T THIS SHUTTER BUTTON FIRE?" or "Oh, crap, I had white balance set for flash when I didn't use the flash, you big dummy!" or, stupidly, "Chrissy, don't move!"

So, in this first photograph, the one at the beginning of this piece, she seems okay.

(Click to enlarge any of the photos in this post.)

But get a load of the photo I took of her face once she decided to wake up, get out from under the covers, lay on top of the covers and start thinking about, oh, I don't know, how I just took her from a dream in which she's running to and fro protecting her back yard domain from attacks by a swarm of finches who want a drink at the bird bath to staring into a camera lens manned by her crazy uncle?

Look at that mug, will ya? Oh, man, what a face. This photograph is a picture worth a thousand words, with a few, in fact, probably a lot of them, not allowed by the FCC censors.

But, right after Chrissy told me with her look of total disgust what she really felt about my paparazzi interference into her cat life, she suddenly was overcome by a huge urge to yawn and she yawned like you've never seen a cat yawn in your life. Just look at those downsized saber tooth choppers. This cute little girl is a voracious carnivore and you better not forget it either, buddy:

Chrissy makes a great subject and I will continue to piss her off by taking her photograph because, despite her annoyance at me, she is really a good cat due to her cranky little personality that I find to be so cute.

CHRISSY THE CAT

My dad and step-mother's cat has a silky black coat like no other cat I've ever seen before. It's soft and smooth and it's a pleasure to pet this little girl. My step-mother found her outside of the school where she used to be a librarian and brought her home.

Since then, a good 10 years ago, they've moved from a condo and into a house. Recently, Chrissy has been spending time out in the yard. She loves it so much it's almost all she wants to do now. Since she's older (less frisky) and somewhat overweight she can't climb the fence to get away so she simply lays in the yard taking a sunbath or else will go into the underbrush along the fence lines and survey her domain from there.

Occassionally, she'll give an effort to chase squirrels and birds but she never catches them. Since she's been an inside cat most of her life she probably wouldn't know what to do with the critters if she caught one trespassing on her yard.

It's a challenge photographing her since she's got that pure black coat. It's tricky to photograph since some of the shots I take of her you can't see anything but black and can't possibly define her legs or paws or even her face, except for those glowing yellow eyes.

In this shot I used my Nikon D700 and a SB-800 AF Speedlight and I aimed the light up and above Chrissy, with the light reflecting back off the bedroom's white wall. This coverage of light allowed for this shot to turn out the way it did, with all her features seeable, as her entire being was covered from above by light.

Fred's Texas Cafe Coldass Beer Coozie

Took off towards Aledo, Texas, a little 'burb directly west of Fort Worth on Interstate 20, after work and hit the Hardcore Texas Ranch House dirt drive and stopped to open the gate. Once inside the gate I stopped again and closed it. Used to be in Texas you'd keep your shit open. Not anymore. Not for a long time.

Anyway, I stopped in to see Hippy Steve and his better half, Beth. We sat outside on the second porch and me and Beth drank her homemade iced tea and Hip poured down Keystone Light's one after the other. I noticed the coozie he had his cold beers wrapped in.

"Cool," I said, looking at it.

So, of course, I pulled out my Nikon D700 and, with the Nikkor AF 50mm f1.8D fixed length lens attached, took a photograph of it.

Well, here it is.

Click on the photo if you want to see it bigger.

We talked about shit for a bit, drinking our drinks and smoking cigarettes and messing a little bit with Beth's cat, Shaboo, before I decided to hit the road back to Fort Worth, back to the hustle and bustle of a city, leaving the nice, quiet country atmosphere I'd rather be.

Here's a photo of Beth holding her cat, Shaboo, on her shoulder:

FORT WORTH ZOO: Sleepy Kitty

When me and a buddy went to the Fort Worth Zoo there were TONS of freakin' kids out there, musta been 30 school buses in the parking lot. I was thinking I'd probably come down with the swine flu 'cause of those little bastards.

I told my fellow photog that I'd rather be on the other side with animals instead of being run past and knocked around by the human animals that were EVERYWHERE on our side.

But that's me. I love animals and hate humanity. Like my literary father figure, Charles Bukowski, said, "Humanity. You never had it from the beginning."

Go to the zoo sometime and you'll know what he means.

When we got to the lion area the big ol' boy, the King of the Jungle, was up on this rock sound asleep (click on photo for a closer look). Some kid said, "He needs to wake up." Which made me say, not too loud but loud enough for people within 10 feet of me to hear, "Yeah, if one of these parents would throw one of their fucking kids into the lion den that'd make him wake the fuck up."

Then, as I was zooming in and focusing my camera on the big ol' boy's face, I heard this little girl's voice.

She said, "You're a naughty man."

The truth, at last.

Hankette The Kitten

My sister, seen here holding Hankette, told me she heard a strange crying sound while she was downstairs in her house when it was raining heavily in Fort Worth, Texas, one day. The sound, she said, was coming from my youngest nephew's bedroom on the second floor of their house. His bedroom windows were open and when they're opened they allow one to crawl onto the back roof. My sister said she went upstairs to investigate.

"I knew it was some kind of animal," she told me. She saw a clump of wet fur on the roof. "I thought it was a rat or maybe a squirrel."

Turns out it was an almost new born kitten.

"Maybe a bird or something got it from it's mother and dropped it there," she opined. "For such a tiny thing she sure was making a lot of noise."

I went over to her house and took pics of the little sweeit pie. I told her to call her Hankette, after Charles Bukowski, since she was found drenched, like a "wet rat in the rain", which paraphrases a line from the movie BARFLY, which Bukowski penned and Mickey Rourke starred in as Bukowski's alter ego, Henry Chinaski.

She couldn't keep Hankette since she already had two beagles and a husband allergic to cats and said she would give her to a rescue shelter or an interested party once she was big enough.

My sister was feeding Hankette with a special feeding bottle and formula for baby cats that she got at PetSmart. Despite my protests my sister said she didn't want to name it Hankette, preferring Yoda based on her little tiny droopy ears.

"I'm not gonna keep her so I don't want to name her anything."

See, if you name an animal you automatically become attached to it and that means it's yours.

Claps of applause go out to my sister for saving a life.

UPDATE: My sister found a couple who wanted a little kitten to spoil. They told her they would get another kitten so Hankette would have a half-brother or half-sister for companionship. "I wouldn't have given them Hankette if they had not made a positive impression on me."

SKITTLES THE YAWNING CAT

As we made a pit stop at a co-worker's house, while out perusing an estate sale and a couple of thrift stores, I took my camera inside with me and searched for Skittles the cat. She was on top of my co-worker's comfy bed fast asleep. After I woke her up I caught her in the middle of a yawn. Normally, my flash intimidates her and so I didn't have it attached to my award-winning Nikon D700, knowing how well it performs in low light.

I got this photograph while she was rising from her cap nap and stretching off the cobwebs with that big ol' yawn.

The ISO was 4500 for this shot and the in camera Noise Reduction was set at normal. I did some post production in Nikon's excellent Capture NX 2 software and you can witness the result for yourself.

I always describe cats caught in the middle of flexing their choppers 'Pavarotti Yawns' as it seems as if they're belting out a long note.

Skittles, or Skids, like most animals, has a funny side to her. She loves to "go spinning" and you can see a video of her doing just that by clicking here.