Charles with Blue Bowl

Moffat County Humane Society asked Caroline and I to judge the pet calendar entries.

I've done so and have decided that photographing cats is tough stuff. Most of these entries/all of these entries of cats are plain, mundane, tame. I wish I had gotten Charles into the mix; he is a tremendously photogenic cat, and I am good with my digital camera.

Charles Dickens, the cat who bites, arrived at the bookstore last fall. He was cute in a James Dean sort of way. A bit of a swagger. Maybe dangerous.

I worried that he would get run over so kept him at the store for a few days, then took him home and had him neutered, which did nothing for the swagger or the biting.

In September I tried to take his picture with my digital camera. I took stiff/dreadful photos of him. By January, Charles and I reached an understanding that allowed me to see him as a model, rather than as a biter, and what a great model/actor he is.

Last year I took a great picture of a cat named Earl Terrible; he was the brother of Earl Twin--both named Earl. The Terrible Twins: gray, tiger-striped with subtle differences in the patches of white on their paws and on their chests and their personalities.Terrible was actually the quieter of the two. Twin wanted attention all the time and would thoroughly trounce his brother if he thought it appropriate.

In the photograph, Terrible is yawning--a great big, content cat yawn. He was sitting above me on the end of a log on our log house in Big Gulch. He looked ferocious and dangerous. That photo won him a spot in the 2007 pet calendar and a blue ribbon for me at the county fair in August.
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One enterprising entrant this year submitted a yawning cat picture, and it was awful. The cat just did not look right.
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I didn't vote for that one.
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Performance Art

When I say, I am interested in performance art, what I really mean is that my life is an ongoing work of performance art. Whatever I do, I am constantly asking myself, "Is this a pretty picture?" This weekend, I put away the misc. items on the sideboard and replaced all the sheep and cat figurines with three milk bottle vases for a clean, uncluttered summer look. That meets my criteria of, "Is it a pretty picture?" I also began the process of ordering the back porch by adding green plants and wind chimes to make a pleasing place to sit and visit. Make no mistake, I still have some very messy places...like my jewelry box and the bathroom closet, but I try to make areas that I look at as pretty as possible.

Caroline

Caroline and her boys--Colton and Caleb

Caroline is my partner in
the bookstore;
the daughter I never had.

"She was never like that when she was little."