Sunday Stills -- Pets

Today's Sunday Stills is the one-year anniversary! So he decided to make today's challenge the same as the very first one that started it all -- Pets.

As y'all know, I have two pets (not counting the various transient spiders): my Casey-baby and my sweet Skeeter-cat. Let's start with Casey.

Casey-girl is definitely a retriever mix, with what we don't know for sure. Personally, I really think she's half golden retriever, half Catahoula. But without doing one of those DNA tests, we'll never know for sure. However, she has a lot of retriever traits and a lot of hound traits, whatever retriever and hound mix she is. I think she is Catahoula because she has most of the Catahoula traits -- possessiveness, color (red with merled body), one two-colored eye (you can't see it in this photo), the coarse, heavy, feathered coat, paws each having a little bit of white, and a white-tipped tail. Anyway, she's my beautiful baby -- I luvs that face!!


Isn't she gorgeous??! This is the first photo I ever took of her, right after we got her from the pound. The vet said she was probably between one and two years old.

We'd had her not quite a year when I took this photo. I can look at this and see how young she looks compared to how she looks now. Her face and muzzle are a lot lighter now than they were then.

I love making her pose for treats. :)

This is her 'please don't make me get off the bed' look!!

About three years ago she was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. She had lost a lot of hair, and she had become extremely sluggish and apathetic -- especially for such a big dog, and one with as much energy as she's always had. She got to where we had to actually lift her into the car to go anywhere -- the same dog that now leaps into the car, overjoyed to be going for a ride! Anyway, once we knew what the problem was, we could treat it. She now has a pill she has to take morning and evening. The easiest way to give it to her is in peanut butter.

She has a very accurate internal clock when it comes to peanut butter time, morning and evening, and she does not let us forget. She greatly enjoys her peanut butter.

I love photographing her from different angles and in different lighting. This angle exaggerates the shape of her face and accentuates the large hound-dog ears.

Here's another interesting angle, lighting and exposure very different, that gives a different look to her face.

But angles aside, she is my beautiful girl, my sweet Casey-baby. I love this dog.

All right, moving right along. Here are two older photos, taken with an SLR and scanned into a digital form. This was Charlie (his full name was Charles Lazarus). He passed away two years ago last January. Isn't he handsome?

I have always loved this photo of Charlie. It was one of those "oh look, point-and-click" moments, and this is what turned out. Doesn't it look like he's smiling and talking? I nearly expect him to say, "Well, I suppose you're all wondering why I called this meeting together..." :)

After his death we knew we wanted another kitty, but we wanted a kitten, a girl kitten. All the shelters had them, but they were asking quite a bit for kittens at the time. We ended up waiting a couple months. Finally, however, one of my friends emailed me that a friend of hers had kittens, a few months old. We arranged things, and brought home our three-month-old baby -- Skeeter. I look at this photo now, taken the first day, right after we brought her home, and she looks sooooooo small compared to how big she is now!!

She was so inquisitive -- she explored everything, the entire house, and never stopped moving for a few seconds put together! It was very hard trying to take pictures of her that first day, I couldn't get her to hold still long enough! She was curious about everything...

A sweet, tiny ball of fluff...

But not too sure about Casey!

Anything and everything was new and interesting and exciting!

Except for baths, that is. She just couldn't seem to keep her white paws white -- but who could when walking through dry ashes in a fireplace?? -- and I had to wash them off every so often during those first several months. She didn't like it.

And every now and then she would get this look on her face, a totally crazed look, like she was out of her little kitty mind. She still gets those looks, and still looks just as mentally deprived!!

She had boundless energy, and played with toys like there was no tomorrow.

'Course, she didn't like it when I dressed her up, either -- although I did it (and do it) sometimes just to annoy her. ;)

She's grown older, larger, and wiser, but she's still curious about everything, and has to be in the middle of whatever's going on.

You gotta love the glowing eyes. I hate that about animal eyes -- it's so hard to use a flash!!

She still doesn't like to pose for photos, and generally manages to turn into an odd shape whenever she sees the camera pointed in her direction.

But she is our kitty, and a beautiful kitty, and despite all her brattiness (Skeeter is a very good name for her -- she 'skeeters' around all over the place!), she is indeed well loved.

I suppose I really ought to to limit the photos to a dozen or so -- but why should I, when I have such wonderfully adorable pets to photograph??!! :)