Tikki, Photographer's Model

I have many cat friends throughout the neighborhood, Gracie, who I have blogged about before, is one of them. Another is Tikki, the calico cat who lives next door.

I first met Tikki before I met the new human neighbors that she shares a household with. She strolled into my cellar while I was doing laundry, introduced herself, and, for the first of many occasions to follow, appointed herself my companion and project overseer. As long as my cat, Kiya is not outside with me Tikki will be by my side, being companionable and offering comments from time to time. If Kiya is out, Tikki sees how far she can push her luck, testing Kiya’s jealousy meter to see how close she is allowed to hang with me that day.

This week I needed to get some shots of some new pendulums I had gotten in for sale and that I wanted to offer on the internet. I did not have the proper lighting for an indoor shoot so I thought I would experiment with setting up in the natural light at sunset outside in my front yard.

I used a black wool cloak from Peru as a background, and made certain to clean it carefully of animal fur (living in a multiple cat/dog household always offers these challenges). I draped the cloak carefully over my Adirondack chair and then created an ingenious way of suspending the pendulums against the background. With all in place I got my camera and began taking a few shots. I did not get very far before Tikki showed up and, sizing up the situation, she determined that there was definitely something missing from the composition…her!

Despite my verbal protests, which of course included pleas to not get cat hair on the cloak, she climbed up on the chair, turned to face the camera, struck a pose and stretched both front paws out with an expression of great satisfaction. And note, she was very careful to not even brush her very fluffy tail on the cloak and pendulum display. I could not resist such thoughtfulness, forcefulness and charm, I took many photos of her, one of which appears here. I regret to say that the product shoot was not a success, but thanks to Tikki’s wisdom I did at least get a great picture of her and a wonderful memory (and she now has her own greeting card, note cards, and journal too).