Sorting Laundry With Cats

One of the perception expanding realizations I've had over my many years spent with cats is that if you put aside your ego for even a few minutes cats can teach you as much as they can learn from you.

For example, cats love a big pile of pipping hot laundry. It's what they do.

Fresh out of the dryer and still crackling with just a touch of static electricity cats will gravitate to your freshly cleaned cloths nearly as fast as a they will to big pile of cat nip. Almost.

Here's Sirrus half buried in a pile of my fresh laundry claiming all that surrounds her as hers. If I was a cat owner I would have taught her and her sister never to do this and this photo-op never would have occurred. As a cat companion on the other hand I've long since learned that the moment by moment with cats is best spent intertwined and shared. Sirrus and Sheba, my two current cats, and those that came before them taught me this and it's worked out quite well for the past 26 years.

In fact sorting laundry with several fully clawed cats turns something pretty mundane into a game for all three of us. If I pull a sock from the pile and she's not distracted her paw will instantly grabbed it. No problem. Flip a fleece vest onto her head as a distracting manoeuvre then grab another sock. Eventually I'll win and all of the laundry will be neatly tucked away. Occasionally I'll loose a bit of blood if I don't think strategically enough to decide which of the pile to grab next. All's fair in love, war and laundry sorting with cats.

It's a great game and one that has taught me much about patience, strategy and how much of the kitten never leaves the cat.



Misty Marina

Ack! More orange. Jack Bauer's gonna kill me!!

The fog this January and February here in and around English Bay Vancouver has been spectacular. To the left is our resident fog beast slipping across the western edge of the False Creek marina. Lots of orange in the image thanks to the long exposure time (9s at f/5.6, ISO 100) which I'm sure I could PhotoShop from orange to white . However I'll save that bit of post processing for the time when I create my "Great Phogs!! of Vancouver!!" coffee-table photo book. An over priced 36" x 24" monster that I expect will be a big seller with the phog phanatic crowd. :)

Today I did a long (8 hours plus) time lapse of the bay fog at first retreating from then reclaiming English Bay. This time I went for a very long time lapse interval (4 seconds between video frames). Two hours of real time for this run will equal 1 minute of video.

So far I have just over 4 minutes (8 hours) recorded and the fog beast today could not have behaved better. After lurking outside of English Bay in the Straight of Georgia all day the beast made it's move a few hours before sunset and drifted in. The resulting video should be quite spectacular given the location I'm shooting from. At 32 floors above English Bay the view is blue sky above and fog below. Sort of like being in an airplane at 35,000 feet only you're sitting in your living room.

I'll process the video this weekend and should have it up on YouTube and Stage6 Saturday or Sunday. Tune in for it. I've got a pretty cute "This is a cat friendly video." bite at the end thanks to a purring Sirrus nuzzling the camera.