Tag: cats

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The Cats of University Heights: Fess

My favorite neighborhood cat is an old-timer. Fess (his real name) is at least 12 years-old (that’s how long he has been with his owners). At one time, the Tom Cat roamed a wide territory around Cleveland Ave. and parallel street Maryland. In his youth, he was known to scale fences to poach from other animals’ food dishes.

Now he stays fairly close to home. I often see him, in the driveway of the apartment where he lives, waiting for the master to come home. The gent drives a pick-up truck, and Fess jumps up into the cab when the door opens.

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The Cats of University Heights: Bonded Pair

This is bit of a double repeat. On Oct. 26, 2016, the series featured the cat on the right as Stretch. Two days later, I spotted the pair together, and in rare occasion captured them both looking out, rather than one of them turned away. BTW, both beasts also appear in March 22, 2016 post “Here, Kitty, Kitty“.

Or am I mistaken? Because further comparing the photos from March and October, the cats do look somewhat different to me. Location is the same, but what is the chance that two different pairs hang out at the same place? 

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The Cats of University Heights: Blue Too

My wife Anne and I took a “cat walk” early evening Oct. 29, 2016—with Fujifilm X-T1 and Fujinon XF18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM OIS lens in tow. My hope: For her to see Chipper outside the apartment building where Copper once lived. We walked down Campus from the canyon side towards Madison. Sure enough, he was there and scurried out to the sidewalk for attention. I also could see Blue, curled up in a pet bed.

A few minutes after the petting and head-rubbing shoes started, another Blue cat approached from the apartment building across the way. I backed up into the street to shoot the Featured Image, at sunset, 5:58 p.m. PDT. Vitals: f/8, ISO 5000, 1/60 sec, 55mm. The aperture setting was accidental, left from the last time I used the camera. The photo is a JPEG converted from RAW using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

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The Cats of University Heights: Blue

I hadn’t seen any cats on Campus beyond Madison in the months after learning about Copper’s demise; she was a neighborhood favorite. So I was surprised to find her long-time companion, whom I call Blue (real name unknown), on Oct. 9, 2016, in the outdoor space they shared and where they were fed. I featured her in a photo comparison testing the HTC One M8, in Spring two years ago.

What a smile that Blue evoked. The cat, and another, live outdoors. Copper was a stray, as Blue may too be. I shot the Featured Image at 6:17 p.m.—five minutes before official sunset, but already quite dusk—using iPhone 7 Plus’ second lens to zoom. Vitals: f/2.8, ISO 320, 1/60 sec, 6.6mm. Below the fold is the comparison photos shot with the M8 in May 2014. I hadn’t known how much the kitten Blue was two years ago. Look how she has grown! 

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The Cats of University Heights: Mates

Sunday night, Oct. 23, 2016, I crossed Monroe at Maryland, where the street makes a horseshoe that comes back to Maryland at Meade. A few houses down, two cats—almost certainly littermates—accosted me for attention. Were these two ever eager, meowing and rubbing on anything close; including me.

The cross-eyed one leaped to the sidewalk, rolling about and demanding pets fervently. The other did likewise, but never leaving the ledge and rubbing the bush repeatedly with her head. I shot more than 20 photos, using the Fujifilm X-T1 with Fujinon XF18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM OIS lens, but selected just two from among the last of them.