Photo points of view make all the difference: final blog post

November 19, 2021

When it comes to photography of anything, the angle and perspective can make or break your picture. When cats are your main subject this is certainly also true. Sometimes a cat can look tiny, while ‘the original creature’ is pretty big, and they can look really big while in reality you are looking at a kitten. Point of view is something you can use to make others look differently at a situation as well. Our feline family got used to being photographed pretty quickly. Flash, via iPhone or otherwise, was not their favorite and I never used it on camera. I am lucky to have my mirrorless Fuji X digital camera, that does an outstanding job at high ISO values, which allows me to shoot in low-light conditions. I mostly used the iPhone when the cats were still living in the basement. It has an uncanny ability to shoot even when it is close to dark.

Figure it out…

This is taken from the inside of one of the crates. It served as a night time safe space when we had just transferred the cats from the basement to the cat room. There are two crates connected to each other and you can see through to the wall of the furthest one where one of my horse paintings is hung. It is a really puzzling perspective as the backdrop for this double-black portrait with Spooky (left) and Pumba (right) at the start of their afternoon nap. The crate is open, by the way, and a pair of bite protection gloves hang over the door because many of the kittens would otherwise barge right into it during play…

Drone view

Hanging over the very top of the crate, photographing down, capturing a daily scene: The kittens fall asleep after nursing and Mitsy then gets up very carefully to make her way to her feeding bowls. To her left are the two litterboxes with the ‘Yesterday’s news’ litter we used in the beginning. We chose it because we figured it would remind her of the mulch in our yard that she used to sleep on. We had no idea, when the project started, if she would take to using a litterbox, but it has never been an issue. Later, we changed over to the finer litter of ‘World’s best litter’, that is made from corn. So even if the kittens were to play in it and lick their paws, it would not hurt their digestion.

The outsider

Even when the crates were open day and night, all cats slept and played in it. Of course there is always an outsider that does not want to come in. In this case it is Spooky that prefers to play with her siblings through the crate walls. the smartest of them all, probably Cheetah, takes advantage of the easy access to the milk supply… We used ‘anti draft’ doorstoppers everywhere: in the beginning it helped prevent kittens from falling through the ‘cracks’, later they served as sleeping places and in the end they were just fun things to play with or acted as pillows for Mitsy’s head.

Breakfast rush hour

During breakfast rush hour the attack of the feeding bowls looked like this… One was always missing: Stipke was no big fan of wet food. Cheetah, in the foreground, was not the fastest kitten and she usually waited until the others had had their fill and then she would get up and eat.

After breakfast…

As the kittens got older, it was not enough to put out one feeding bowl. Although none of them had real food jealousy, they were all very curious about what was in every single bowl. Sometimes we would feed them all the same wet food, other times we would try out new stuff. Depending on how hungry they were ( = how much Mitsy had allowed them to nurse), some types of wet food disappeared in their stomachs quickly, while others were not finished. Were we spoiling them a little bit, perhaps?

Climbing the crate and the tree

It is funny that we heard from one of the new homes of our kittens that they climbed up obstacles rather than jump. I think the origin of that habit might lie both in our fabulous cat tree and in the use of the crate. The kittens did not limit their world to just 2 dimensions. That is where their movement started. But as they got older, and had familiarised themselves with the square footage, their attention went to what was over their heads. Literally. The crates were pretty high (there is an earlier post where Wim crawled into one to show that we easily fit in one ourselves – they are quite big, would fit a large dog). Climbing the sides and hanging from the top was a challenge at first but as the kittens got bitter and more agile, the made the climbing a part of their daily play. It was like Cirque du Soleil for cats!

Maternal moments

As the mother of six fairly large kittens, a lot was required of Mitsy. We knew she had a sweet disposition, just from watching her as an outside cat. But the kittens really put her character to the test and she passed with flying colours. Have a look at this sequence… If there existed a feline Nobel price for tolerance and kitten care, Mitsy would win it for sure!

Motherhood is exhausting…

Sometimes Mitsy was so tired, that she did not even get up to eat!

Whenever there is the slightest chance of a quick nap, Mitsy takes it, knowing full well that it never lasts long…

Job well done, Mitsy! We are so proud of you!

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