Look who turned up in my studio

I'm always in awe of other bloggers who can get their animals to pose for photos. It's no secret, Bleubeard simply refuses to have his photo taken. So I was totally surprised yesterday when I started to pull out my sewing chair to work on a few pages and found this:

He knows he's not allowed on furniture, so that may be why he sat so still.

Or maybe it's because I awakened him.

Regardless, he doesn't look too ashamed to be in the wrong place at the right time. Luckily, I had my camera in hand, so I could take photos of an upcoming project, or I might never have caught these.

He wasn't even trying to run.


And when I turned the chair around, he didn't even jump down. Instead, he turned around in the chair

and began shamelessly cleaning himself.

While he was doing that, I sat on the floor to get a better eye to eye view and photos.

Too bad this one is horribly out of focus. He looks so innocent here.

I loved the look on Bleubeard's face in this one, but it was so dark, all I could do was lighten it the best I could.


Fearing he would decide to jump up and leave, I stood, backed away, and continued shooting. I took over 200 pictures in the course of about 30 minutes.

I never got the lighting right, though. For example, the above is the original

and this is the same photo "auto leveled" in Photoshop. It was actually better on the auto setting than any and every thing else I tried at the manual level.

By turning on the flash, you can see his true colors. Although I have many, many more of these photos, I decided to only bore you with share a few. It's so rare that he allows me to photograph him, I just had to dedicate an entire post to my brazenly defiant delightful Bleubeard today.

Please don't call him a cat, since he's only heard the word a few times in his life (and never by me). And please don't call me his "mom." I'm simply his caretaker, the person who shares a blog with him, and deliverer of the kibble.

What better way to celebrate Bleubeard allowing me to take his photo, than to find a blog that's dedicated to, and all about, cats. Today's blog is called Crazy Catlady Carm from Buffalo, NY (in the US), and is run by Carmelynn Cole. Or maybe I should say it's run by her eight cats. Yep, eight or, as she writes it: 8Gr8Cats. And they all seem to get on well together, too. She dedicates certain furry days of the week to titles such as "Caturday" and Wordless Wednesday. Hope Carm's blog puts a smile on the faces of cat lovers and cat owners. And I wish you could see how happy I was when I got Bleubeard on film. Maybe I should allow him on the furniture more often.