Funny Cat Stuff

This is the cutest video EVER.  Oh my goodness, I’m getting a cuteness overload.  It’s getting me in the mood to get a another kitty cat.  I need to remind myself that I already have 3 cats (not to mention 4 dogs), so… NO. MORE. CATS.

Lordy, I was LOLing my head off watching this.  Mainly because if I’m not mistaken (which I could very well be) these are 2 males fighting for alpha position.  So it’s funny for me that they should subtitle this as a male-female couple arguing (sorry, nerd alert).  We have these “scenarios” playing out on a regular basis at our house.  My room is on the 2nd floor, so I have ringside seats whenever the males do this dominance thing.  It’s quite noisy though.  It’s quite different from say, a male-female courtship where the sounds are different.  But what do I know?  All my cats are spayed, so I don’t really see the mating thing going on.

Hehehe…I just wish the sound was better so we could appreciate just how good these boys are, even humor aside.  They’re actually very good.  Typically attributed to Gioachino Rossini, the song entitled, “Duetto buffo di due gatti”, or humorous duet for two cats, many say he didn’t actually write it.  Anyhoo, it’s really just a cute number, often sung as an encore for sopranos.  

Sabang, Palawan (The Pictures)

Sabang may not have been the most strikingly beautiful place we’ve been to, but definitely it gave me a lot of images to work with.  For sure, it’s one of my all-time favorite places, as far as photo output is concerned.  Of course, being in a beach resort, I was able to get images from the beach and thereabouts:

And of course our stint over at the Underground River and the Mangrove Tour bore many photos, and here are some of my favorites:

Throughout the trip, one theme emerged prominently as the one I gravitated towards the most: reflections.  I didn’t even realize I was capturing different types of reflections until I got home and reviewed the photos.  Some trips it’s people portraits, sometimes it’s landscapes, this time it’s all about reflections.

The mangrove gave up great images because the waters were so still that the reflected images are almost exact upside-down copies of the originals. If you stare long enough, you get disoriented with what’s up and what’s down:

Here’s another mangrove shot, but this time, with the sun shining high in the sky, it gave a washed out background to complement the lush green foliage:

Here’s a shot of the resort as reflected on the blue water of the infinity pool:

This one captured the most colorful of the 3 sunsets we witnessed as reflected on the wet sand:

Take a look at this picture:

I took this photo of the leaf from underwater looking up.  Because the water was so clear, it ended up sort of looking like I captured it as it fell from the sky.  I swear, we could’ve spent an entire day just soaking in the water there.

Now we get to the 2 pictures I was most excited about.  The first, is my latest attempt at panoramic photography.  This time it took around 15 images of the shoreline, from end to end.  Of course, CS3 did all the hard work, as it stitched all the photos into one seamless image.  It’s actually very easy, you should try it, in case you’re curious about it.

Of course it ended up having a fish-eye effect, because I took the pictures from one standpoint.  It’s so much fun, and it’s so easy, thanks to CS3!

The other picture is the elusive star trails.  I’ve posted a couple of attempts through the months, but none really turned out the way I wanted them too.  In my humble opinion, of the trick shots that I’ve learned since I started with the hobby, star trails would hands down be the most difficult.  Too many factors needed to be ideal to make the shot possible: you should be away from the city, the area shouldn’t be well lit, there shouldn’t be a big moon, it should be a cloudless sky, you should shoot pointing north, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  But I was so happy that I finally got a north shot for the first time, and got the concentric circles that I’ve been trying to capture all these months.  Happy!

So that’s it for Sabang, Palawan, the first leg of our long vacation for this year.  Next up, our pictures for the 2nd leg, when we stayed in Mandala Spa in Boracay, Aklan.  But for sure, we’ll be back in Sabang as soon as our roving feet lead us back there again.

Sabang, Palawan (The Experience)

What we enjoyed most of the time we were in Sabang, was the sun, the sand, the surf.  I don’t think we’ve ever soaked in the Philippines shores as much as we did here.  The conditions were ideal: no rocks beneath our feet, just fine powdery sand, warm water temperatures, and rollicking waves that reduced us to little kids, squealing in delight as the waves pounded us silly.

But outside of frying under the sun like rows of daing, our trip had 2 highlights: The Puerto Prinsesa Subterranean River National Park (Underground River) and the Mangrove Paddle Boat Tour.  We did the Underground River first.  From the resort, we did a scenic 5-minute walk along the beach to the port, then we took a short, maybe 5-10 minute boat ride to the River.  On the boat, I met a lovely little puppy that I cuddled with all throughout the trip.

When we got there, from the shore, you do a super short hike to the mouth of the cave, and what greets you is a beautiful scene, especially for us, because we were the very first visitors for the day:

No amount of pictures could do justice to how spectacular it looks inside.  No wonder it’s our only finalist to make it to the New 7 Wonders of Nature.  Speaking of, in case you might want to vote, click here.  Trying to take a picture of one rock or stalagmite or stalactite inside the cave would be taking taking a photo of half a toenail of a person: it just do the whole any justice.  But anyway, here are a couple that I took anyway:

The “Cathedral”

Part of the “vegetable section” (I think this is the pechay?)

One of the many bats inside the cave. They hang upside down on the rocky cliffs.

The other highlight of the trip was the Mangrove Paddle Boat Tour, with the inimitable and unforgettable Lady Mangrove.

Not to be confused with Lady Gaga, Lady Mangrove is one of many valiant volunteers who patrol the ecological treasure trove that is the mangrove.  Mangroves are essential to the ecology because it’s like the nursery of many animals and fish.  Without it, the ecology will be crippled irreparably.  Lady Mangrove with a couple of other volunteers subsist on the 100 pesos per visitor fee they collect.  We left a bigger amount to help them out because they do valuable work that we should all be thankful for.  They do the dirty job that few of us would undertake as our lot in life.  I really hope the government helps out these little not-so-well known nature sites.  Scientists from the U.S., Africa, and Europe have all been amazed at what they call one of the oldest mangroves in the world.  And they say the mangroves here, called bakawan locally, are unique in all the world.  They are candle-shaped, as opposed to the more common branchier types found everywhere else.  Plus, they grow tall as the trees in a primary forest, not short like the other mangroves I’ve seen.  Plus, they reflect beautifully on the calm water surface:

We also saw different animals like birds, snakes and monitor lizards or bayawak, like this one we found resting on a branch:

Another plentiful denizen of the mangroves are the mudskippers.  They litter the banks of the river in droves!  And they don’t seem to be scared of humans.  They don’t skip away until you’re really close.  Lady Mangrove said they also eat the mudskippers as part of their regular diet.

And at the end of the tour, Lady Mangrove even sings a song she wrote to cap off the tour. I have a video of it, and I was supposed to post it, but I can’t seem to rotate the video.  I recorded it vertically, but my camera recorded it sideways.  Anyone who can help me rotate it so you guys don’t have to watch it sideways?  I can seem to rotate it either on iPhoto or even YouTube.  Anyway, another nice perk after taking the tour, is that every visitor gets to plant a baby bakawan on the shores of the mangrove during low tide, and as the years pass, it will take root and be part of the whole mangrove network.  Nice touch.

And then we get to the wood worm.  Known as tamilok locally, it’s a delicacy that’s insanely popular in the area.  Visitors are offered to try and eat a bite or two of the supposed aphrodisiac.  It’s called a wood worm, but Lady Mangrove said it’s actually closer to shellfish, like oysters.  They just wash the tamilok, put it in some vinegar, maybe sprinkle some salt, and off you go!

You’ll find the wood worms burrowed in rotting wood, specifically bakawan that have since fallen and died.  Once the wood is chopped open, the tamilok instantly dies.  You can then pull out the alien-looking worm easily from the groove it has gored into the wood.  We got a live demo on how to find tamilok in the wild.  lady mangrove found a branch in a dead stump, chopped it open, and true enough there was one big fat one inside, which died once the air hit it.

It’s got a hard helmet-like head that has what looks to me like a beak-like mouth, and a scissor-like tail that’s pretty sharp.  It looks really gross (and in this particular picture, slightly obscene), therefore I refused to taste it.  I have worm phobia so it took everything in me to even just touch it, much less eat it.  Delle, on the other hand, decided to try it.

She was just posing here, she didn’t eat the whole thing.  They just cut a portion of it, she swished it around some vinegar, put some rock salt, and here’s her actual moment of truth:

Blech.  No thank you.  They said it tasted like gelatinous oysters.  *faints*

(Next: The Pictures)

I Know The Feeling…

You remember how that theme from the TV show Friends goes, the one from the Rembrandts: “When it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year…”?  I know the feeling.  I hate being such a whiner.  Especially when things aren’t really BAD bad (it can ALWAYS get worse), I feel like such an ingrate.  But I’ve seen better days, and to be fair, it really hasn’t been easy for the past 2 years.  Stuff that happened at work, at home, personal stuff, and most recently Cairo getting sick, and so much more (I know, I know, you can do the same, only with blessings.  But humor me on this one.)  And like the Friends song, you think, “I’m probably just having a bad day.”  Then it becomes a bad week, then month, then year, then 2 years.  The best way to describe it is: imagine falling down, and you’re trying your best to get up, but you can’t.  You try and try and try and TRY and TTTRRRYYYYYYYY…but you can’t.  So when I saw this video, it struck a nerve.  I thought, “I know the feeling, pup!”

The moral of the story?  You can be cute even if you’re having a bad day.

Laiya, Batangas (The Experience & The Pictures)

The last time we went to Laiya was a disaster.  As I wrote here in a past post, we went around 2 days after a storm, which we found out was a BAD idea.  There was garbage and muck floating everywhere, and finding even a small patch of clear water was an impossibility.  There were plastic bags, tsinelas, plastic bottles, lots of siltation, and even the smell was a bit sewer-y.  It also rained early evening, and it didn’t stop until around 4am, which basically spelled party over for any evening plans.  Plus, there was a sea urchin incident in very shallow water the next morning, which put an early end to the holiday.  This time around was the complete opposite.  The weather was BEAUTIFUL.  It felt like summer all over again.  And the water was gorgeous.  It was clean and it was clear as crystal.  Like I said, the sand in Batangas is far from powdery, but it didn’t matter, as long as the water was clear.

Of course with water as clear as that, my best friend for the trip was my waterproof camera, the Canon D10.  Although the beach consisted of barren sand, we found a stretch of coral in the far end, where a decent amount of fish could be seen.  It was then I realized how difficult it was to attempt to shoot fish underwater, while snorkeling.  Underwater photography is a cinch while diving is a cinch because you can control your buoyancy in the water with your BCD.  But while snorkeling (and wearing only a mask w/o a snorkel), it’s a real bitch.  I’d be gasping for air every 15-30 seconds, I’d be rolling in the water like a floating wayward beach ball, and I’d be thrashing about trying to steady myself for a good angle, which ended up scaring the fish anyway.  So most of my shots were blurred or badly framed.  But surprisingly, a handful still came out decent.  Here are some of them:

Blenny

Pufferfish (the delicious but sometimes deadly fugu)

Striped Catfish

Juvenile Tall-Fin Batfish

Coral Hawkfish

Anemonefish or Clownfish

There was also a shot that I was trying so hard to get.  Usually, you need a special lens to be able to capture a shot of both out of water and underwater scenes in one frame.  But you can fake it using any waterproof camera.  After many tries, here’s an approximation of this really cool shot.  It would be cool if there was a shark underwater.

We also found the cutest tiniest toy car on the beach.  It looked like a twiddlebug car lost in the sand dunes of the desert.

The weekend was spent mostly swimming, baking under the warm sun, playing DSi and PSP, and sleeping.  It was a relaxing weekend, one that I badly needed for quite some time.  I was having a difficult August, so I really needed a literal and figurative break.

Even on our way home, we were still given a treat.  It was a spectacular sunset that saw us off, as we drove home.  It was so beautiful that we just had to stop along the Star Tollway, pulled over at the shoulder, just to get a snapshot of the twilight sky.  There were cars and buses and trucks whizzing dangerously close, but I just had to take a shot.  The setting sun splashed light and collor on the side of Mt. Makiling and also painted the sky on the other side with patches of bright orange.  It was painful seeing this without my DSLR and my filters.  Why can’t we have sunsets like this when we have our landscape shoots?

Mt. Makiling

A view from the other side

It was a lovely weekend.  A little pocket of peace and quiet.  If we had more of these, we’d be a happier, healthier bunch of campers.

Ehrlichiosis

I am inconsolably heartbroken.  My most beloved Yorkie, Cairo, was listless and had a fever last Tuesday, so by the next day, I rushed him to the vet.  After a couple of blood tests, the results came out positive for a tick-borne blood parasite.  My heart sank.  Although prognosis is good if treated early, the disease takes about a month to treat, and even then, it could become chronic, meaning it could come back every now and then.  Worse, diseases like this weaken the blood, very much like Dengue in humans.  You know how it’s more dangerous if you get Dengue for a second time?  It’s sort of the same for dogs.  It’s called Ehrlichiosis.  I’ve feared this disease because even from way back when Cairo was a puppy, I was warned that pets bought from a certain area are exposed to this specific disease because supposedly it’s widespread there.  I’m not sure if Cairo got it there, since it’s been so long, but where he got it is beside the point.  What kills me is that he has it, period.  It brings me back to the time when Duke, my Turkish Angora, fell from the 22nd floor when he was just a kitten.  Also when Cairo had an eye infection that almost cost him his eyesight.  Not having any kids, my pets are the closest I have to a family.  People who belittle the love some people have for their animals just don’t understand.  Sometimes I feel I’m being punished for playing favorites.  The worst illnesses befall the pets who are closest to me.  Not that it would be okay for the others to get sick, but the pain is extra searing when it happens to the ones you love the most.  I just find it weird that after I posted abut my late Labrador, my beloved Tyro, in a mere two days, I’d be stressing about Cairo, arguably, of all the pets I ever had, the one I’ve been closest to.  It tears me up to see him sick and weak and not eating.  And sometimes, when he tries to stand, he falls over because he’s very unstable on his feet.  He’s doing a little better now, after a day of being confined at the vet’s clinic.  He’s glad to be home and has gained some of his strength and energy back.  But the vet said it would take at least 5 days to see if he’s responding well to the treatment.  I’m on pins and needles, and it’s so hard to keep doing what I do everyday: going on air, doing my routine, when all that’s in my head is my little boy, who’s at God’s mercy.  Now I know what it means to treat each day as a gift.  Not knowing what the future holds for Cairo, I’ll take whatever is given to us, whether it’s just a couple of months, or 20 more years.  Times like these, when you can lose some of the things in your life you love the most, everything else seems so small.  The problems, the haters, the financial concerns, the issues, the baggage, everything suddenly takes the backseat.  It sucks.  When we did the Top Ten quotes that inspire the other day, I tried to take what I can.  I guess I just have to take it one day at a time, and see where the road takes me.

Get well soon, Cairo! I pray to God that you do another Duke and beat the odds and beat this.  He’s my miracle cat, so now be my miracle dog.  You bring so much joy to an old fart’s life.   Life’s a little easier with you around, so please stay on for a lot longer.  Your Daddy needs you so much more than you need him.

Hachiko

Even as a kid, I’ve known of the story about an Akita who loyally waited for his master at the same train station, long after his master died, everyday for 10 years, until his death.  In Japan, Hachiko was long considered a hero, a symbol of what loyalty is all about.  They even erected a small monument for him, at the same train station where he waited in vain for his master who never came again to meet him.  His body was eventually stuffed and is now on display at the National Science Museum in Japan.  So I was really thrilled when @derekcarlos (thanks Derek!) sent me the link via Twitter about a new movie about Hachiko (there was a Japanese film about him in 1987) directed by a director I really trust, Lasse Hallström, and starring Richard Gere.

I loved dogs even as a kid, but the tragedy then was, I had a sister with asthma, so I couldn’t own a dog as a little boy.  I had to wait until I was much older and my sister already moved out of the house.  So Hachiko’s story always struck a raw nerve in me, because he was that dog I never had, but wanted so badly.  I always felt like I was meant to have a dog best friend.  After failing miserably with my first few attempts at dog-keeping, I finally met the closest I ever got to my very own Hachiko, my yellow Labrador Retriever, Tyro.

He was a great dog, he’d stay by my side, even without a leash, he won’t leave my side even if there were other dogs playing, and once someone tempted him with a spare rib, yet he stayed solidly by my side.  And if I were to go inside a door, he’d wait outside that door until I came out.  And one time we were in a friend’s house in Tagaytay, they said he stayed by me and guarded me the whole time I was asleep.  Whatta dog.

I cried buckets of tears when he died.  He died on a Good Friday.  He waited for me to leave the house to go out of town, and within minutes of arriving at our destination, I found out that he breathed his last.  I loved that dog to pieces.  I’d have many great dogs after that, especially the 2 little ones we have now, but Tyro was the 1st dog who taught me how to be a responsible dog owner.  I learned my biggest lessons in being a dog’s human from him the most.  The gentlest dog I ever knew.  Yet, he’d take on the biggest dogs if he thought I was in danger.

So watching this trailer and getting reminded of Tyro got me really nostalgic.  I can’t wait to see the movie.  I heard it comes out October 2009 in the U.S.

Here are some of the very few pictures I have of Tyro.  Okay, forgive the outfit and the Hallmark Channel running shot. This was, after all, deep in the 90’s.

And here’s a video of some scenes from the original 1987 Japanese movie about Hachiko, Hachiko Monogatari (ハチ公物語).

Cat Portraits (Isis)

Isis is the undisputed superstar of our 3 cats.  Correction, not superstar, but SUPAHSTAH!  She looks the part, and acts the part.  She’s our snootiest cat and her furry plumage befits the queen of a cat we fondly call, Isisita Una Poca de Gracia.

Isis is a persian cat, but a doll-faced persian, as opposed to the peke-faced persian, which has the more scrunched-up face.  That’s why she doesn’t look much like those bad-guy persians we see in movies like “Cats & Dogs”.  Although she has a prettier face, in cat shows, the preferred version is still the more severe peke face.

Speaking of cat shows, Isis is a certified CFA Champion Persian.  It’s one of the most prestigious cat shows internationally.  Unlike the local cat shows, once you’re a CFA champion, you’re a champion anywhere in the world.  Unlike the other championships, the cat will only be a Philippine champion, but bring her to another country, and she doesn’t bring the title with her.  Isis earned enough points in 4 rings during the first ever CFA show in the country and earned her stripes, which was surprising, given that she was a doll-faced persian, not very favored by judges in general.

Isis is also the most kikay when it comes to the camera.  She so doesn’t mind being photographed, unlike the other 2, and even poses when faced with a camera lens.  She’s such a model and a hammy one at that.

The cross that our lovely persian bears though, is that every year, she needs to be completely shaved, usually around December.  For some strange reason, around that time, her hair starts to clump and matt, until the only recourse is to shave.  This happens annually.  All year her fur is fine, until the last quarter, when bam, it’s knot city!

She gets depressed for a week or two, maybe because she lost her lovely coat, but she gets used to it after a while, and besides, her fur grows back so fast.  But when she’s shaven, she looks more like a rat than a cat.  Hehehe…she looks so kawawa when she’s all shaven.  It’s as if she’s ashamed of her naked body!  It’s so funny when she licks herself to groom her non-existent fur, then she stops after one lick, as if to realize, “Oh yeah, I’m freakin’ bald…”  She looks like a sphinx cat…

But for now she’s still in all her ploofy glory and she knows she’s beautiful.  She walks around the condo like she owns it!  She’s haughty, not at all malambing like Duke, or friendly like Aras.  She’s not afraid of strangers, in fact she completely ignores them, as if they’re not even worth the slightest of attention.

Isis is also the most affected by catnip.  Catnip is a dried herb that’s the equivalent of marijuana to humans, I guess, with one exception: catnip is legal.  It’s so funny, once they sniff the catnip, they start rolling on the floor as if they were high on narcotics!  But none affected as much as Isis.  She writhes on the floor like a pussy possessed!  She purrs and licks her paws and rolls on the floor, rubbing her body on anything and everything.  One of these days I’ll videotape it.

She’s also the most gentle of the 3 cats.  Isis is the only cat who would NEVER bite or scratch even when in pain.  Whenever we groom her, or pull at her fur when we’re trying to de-tangle a nasty natty clump of matted fur, she at most would vocally complain, but she will take all the suffering that you throw her way.  Such a good-natured cat.  She is the only cat that I have ZERO fear of.  She’s about as aggressive as a ball of cotton.

Our beloved Isis: a regal royal, the most finicky eater, the most disinterested in human affairs.  Our supermodel, at least for most of the year, but who gets her annual shaving whether she likes it or not.  Our kindest, most even-tempered pet (it’s a tie between her and Cairo, our Yorkie), and who almost died when she twice tore off the staples on her stomach incision when we had her spayed.  She makes you feel like it’s her favor to you, that she lets you take care of her.  But in some strange twisted way, we TOTALLY agree with her.

Cat Portraits (Aras)

Meet our little spitfire, Aras.  Aras is our youngest cat, and being a domestic cat, he ended up the smallest of our felines, so he eternally looks the part of bunso.  It didn’t matter that as early as 3 months  old, when we rescued him from a Batangas island, we fed him the best food, gave him supplements, but he never really grew anymore.

We call him our jologs cat.  Our biggest problem with him is that he’s always PG (patay-gutom).  It doesn’t matter how much food we give him, he’s always hungry and therefore always eats so fast!  If you watch the other 2 cats eat, Duke and Isis, they eat so daintily, taking food one kibble at a time, making time to clean their whiskers every few minutes, and remaining prissily clean throughout the whole process.  Not Aras.  He will gobble up the food in large mouthfuls, often choking, finishing way ahead of the other two, then vomiting everything an hour later because he ate too much, too fast. Sigh.

He is also, in many ways, our most feral cat.  It doesn’t matter how long we’ve taken care of him, he is our least domesticated cat.  We also call him our wildcat, mainly because he really retained a lot of his wild qualities.  His tiger stripes are perfect for him because he’s a Bengal in a kitty cat’s body.  He hates being groomed, he hates having his claws trimmed, and he ’s uncomfortable being held or cuddled.  It’s frustrating actually, because he’s so cute but I can’t cuddle him.

Not really being a cat person, he’s also the cat I’m most afraid of.  He’s so unpredictable.  One time (and the last time) that I took him out of the condo, I rode on the elevator and he freaked out when the car stopped on a floor, and someone stepped in.  He started clawing and scratching and he flipped out completely!  I had open wounds on my arms and face and some of them bleeding profusely.  I was so scared of him for months, that I wouldn’t even touch him!  But eventually, I got accustomed to the different way of handle cats.  But I must admit, I’m still on guard every time I need to handle him.

But surprisingly, despite his wildcat nature, he’s the friendliest to strangers.  As long as you don’t try to pick him up, he’ll readily approach strangers, at least more than the other 2.  In fact, he once ended up winning the “friendliest cat” award in one cat show.  He even landed in the Philippine Star when they featured the cat show.

Like the other 2, Aras is also neutered, after which he calmed down quite a bit.  In fact, there was a time I considered giving him away because I felt he was a little to feral for my capabilities.  I wasn’t sure I could handle a cat who still had so much of the savage in him.  But thank God I didn’t because although he is the pet I least interact directly with, he’s family, and you don’t give up on family.

I really LOVE the 50mm lenses because Aras is the most difficult to photograph because he’s the most skittish with the camera.  He’d run away even before I’m in position to click.  I have to be like a cat myself, stalking and creeping on all fours, just to find him during an unguarded moment and capture that image.

I love how the lenses, together with the high ISO of the D90, captures images of Aras so sharply, even under low light.  I love how I finally captured in a photograph his wonderful tiger stripes.  He’s always been the pet with the LEAST pictures, not because he’s not beautiful, but because he’s so elusive.

So despite being jologs, Aras will always have a special place in our hearts.  To us, he’ll always be that fragile little kitty who we rescued from being drowned in the middle of the Mainit channel.  I’m glad I didn’t give up on the little fella.  It was my mistake trying to tame an animal of the wild.  In fact he isn’t wild, he’s just being a cat.  I just had to learn to stop dictating how he should behave in human society and let him be the animal that God created him to be.  I also should never forget that inasmuch as we chose him, he chose us as well.  He’s our hellion wildcat, and we wouldn’t want him any other way.

Cat Portraits (Duke)

(Part 1 of 3)

I tawt i taw a puti cat.  Get it, puti cat?  White pusa?  Hwe hwe, whatever.  Anyway, when I blogged about my then brand new 2.8 50mm prime lens, a lot of people wanted a sample of my shots using it.  Since I didn’t have a photo trip planned at the time, I thought of doing portraits of 3 of my most favorite subjects, my 3 cats.

I love my dogs too, but with all due respect, they’re nowhere near are photogenic as the cats.  Our furry felines get into all these poses and situations that just beg to be shot.  Our dogs are way too malikot and they hardly stay still long enough for portraits.

I loooved using the 50mm lens.  I’ve long wanted a lens that could capture lowlight indoor images of my constantly moving cats.  Matched with my new D90’s wonderful high ISO’s, the 2.8 setting made shooting so much easier without having to use any flash, which my cats hate.  It’s usually game over once I use the flash.  They start avoiding me like a leper.

I love capturing their different moods, from tentative furball to killer pussy, they’re my dream subjects.  My dogs usually just have one expression: crazy happy.  Duke, our standoffish Turkish Angora, is the alpha cat in the house, and his position in the pecking order becomes his regal demeanor.  Being the oldest and the largest, no one really dares question his dominance and leadership.  Our most elusive cat, he is the most wary when it comes to strangers.   He disappears whenever we have visitors.  It takes sooo long before you can gain his trust.  He has claustrophobia (he literally freaks out if you try and force him into a carrier) but is also the most athletic of the 3.

As I’ve recounted before, Duke fell from the 22nd floor and lived to tell the tale.  He’s our lucky miracle cat.  You can still see a considerable limp when he walks, given his forelegs are studded with plates and pins, but it doesn’t stop him from still leaping from the floor to the top of the ref in a single bound and back.

He used to be a multi-awarded cat when we used to enter him in cat shows, but since his fear of crates got worse, there’s no way for us to bring him out of the condo now.  So he stays in the whole day, happy to watch the pigeons as they perch right outside his window.

Hands down, our most malambing cat, he would cuddle for as long as you can cradle him and he’d “paw” my belly, the way he used to paw his mom’s teats when he used to suckle.  They say it’s about as close to an “I love you” as you can get from a cat.  He’s also the most protective.  When our domestic cat, Aras, would freak out and scratch me, Duke would be the first to rush to my side and wrestle the spooked youngster.  Always rushing to the rescue.  And when someone is sick, he’d hardly leave your side.  Shhh…just between us, he’s my favorite among the cats.