Crap

Pee-Oh-Gee-Oh, recharging his batteries.
Betcha wanna bury your hand in that supple-looking belly, huh?
I wouldn't, if I were you. It's his lure. And when you're drawn in, he snaps like a spider.
The result is: claws and teeth.

For someone who totally hates cats, I sure take a lot of pictures of them. ("A lot" is relative, by the way. Out of all the pictures I took last year, my pictures of the cats represent maybe 2% of all my photos. And that's a generous estimate.) Today, Pee-Oh-Gee-Oh was being especially nice and photogenic. I took a few pictures of him napping in what little moment of sun we had.

DBC: intense and just a little curious about my goings-on

Then, tonight, while I was sitting in the office in the dark with only the glow from my computer providing the light, I snapped a few pictures of the Dirty Bastard Cat sitting on the filing cabinet behind me. He was pretty cooperative.

PeeOh-GeeOh in the night
Exchanging glances
Wondering in this light
What were the chances
He could rip my head
Right off my scrawny neckkkkkkk....

One of the beauties of learning how to shoot pictures in low light is, I can take pictures of the cat without getting "red-eye" (or, in the case of animals, "green-eye") effect. The best way to achieve this is by adjusting your apertures, then enhancing the photo in a photo editing software. Of course, it also helps that Pee-Oh-Pee-Oh actually sat still for this.

It's the ghost of Pee-Oh-Gee-Oh Present... Ahhhhh...

In this last picture of the Dirty Bastard Cat, I adjusted the time my shutter was open. In this case, I think it was about two seconds. For this picture, he didn't sit still and the result is "ghosting." Given that he's a little specter in my life, I thought this was appropriate.

Finally, Bee asked me to make a point of snapping pictures of the older cat, Frieda. She's 18 and a handful. Bee says, she thinks Frieda doesn't know she's old and I keep telling Frieda it's "time to go toward the light." And yet, she continues to live despite peeing red (yes, we've taken her to the vet and she's been medicated, etc., but the problem persists. She doesn't manifest signs of pain), being incredibly skittish (Bee is a very quiet person. I'm not. I think I freak Frieda out, even though I'm trying not to. She looks at Bee as if to say, "Why is the Noisy One here?"), and having a heart murmur (which you'd never know and seems to have no effect. This cat goes up and down two flights of stairs multiple times a day with no visible distress whatsoever.)

So, here's Frieda. Bee thinks she's part Maine Coon. She has the most human-like, expressive face on a cat I've ever seen. When she looks at you, it's like she's trying to communicate with you telepathically. So far, though, I'm missing the message. Bee rescued her from a shelter in Washington State many, many years ago. I keep telling Bee, she's going straight to heaven for that. (I, on the other hand, am going straight to hell because, in the wild, I'd have kicked this cat to the curb by now. Thank God we don't live in the wild, huh?)

Frieda in a rare moment of peacefulness

One more thing to note: neither of these cats were very vocal until they came to live here. Now, they talk all the time. That's entirely my fault, because I meow at them. Pee-Oh-Gee-Oh and I can have minutes long conversations. It's so bad, Bee calls him Chatty Catty. I call him Buttercup. As in, "What's up, Buttercup?" (I'm not sure he likes that. I think it offends his masculinity. I call him that to keep him humble.) As for Frieda, she has a Betty Davis meow. It's not a pretty thing. We're thinking she's sneaking cigarettes from the alley cats when we're not looking.

Photo copyright: D.C. Confidential, 1/08