On my twin sisters’ birthday, we pause for another commemoration—this one belated. A decade ago, on Oct. 20, 2014, we inherited Cali. I first met the tortoiseshell across the street from my daughter’s shared college residence on June 4 of that year. The kitten would crawl into our adult child’s bed later that night and come to be contested among coeds living in several houses. None of the women properly cared for the cat, but all of them claimed her.
After some pushing and pulling—with some women moving away and leaving Cali behind—she would become our daughter’s pet. But short-lived. School started and one of the students turned out to be allergic to cats. And so, the skinny, underfed, undernourished Cali came to live with my wife and me.
What a ravenous thing she was. She couldn’t eat enough and got into some situations—such as ravaging the Christmas ham. Eventually she had her fill and came to be a light eater, as her slim profile demonstrates. She remains a scrawny kitty. While an indoor cat now, she’s still something of a streetwise feral.
Let’s talk her portraits, both captured yesterday using Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. The rather different hues aren’t because of the smartphone’s camera or lenses. In the minute between shots, clouds covered much of the setting sunlight. Vitals for the Featured Image: f/2.4, ISO 250, 1/60 sec, 70mm (film equivalent); 5:47 p.m. PDT. The companion: f/1.7, ISO 200, 1/200 sec, 23mm (film equivalent); 5:46 p.m.