Vintage Photo: Baby Bean in the Bathroom, 2007

April 5, 2026 Bernadette

Tiny Jelly Bean welcomes me into the bathroom!

Jelly Bean, just about seven weeks old, welcomes me into the bathroom from the side of the tub, just inside the door. He was always as cute as cute could be, but how he learned such complete cuteness at such a young age just proves that he was born with it. And always ready for fun.

I didn’t get my DSLR until October 2007 and until then I only had an insufficient point and shoot digital and still used my Pentax K-1000 manual film camera when I wanted better photos. That overlapped with Mimi and her kittens’ arrival and first three months here and I’m glad I could capture them in their first three months in photos that were way better than that little digital.

Below, from outside the bathroom door, Jelly Bean is being totally silly and ready to play, looking like he’s trying to push the doors open and bust out. Looking down, the two panels on the bottom are old window screens I hinged over the bottom of the doorway like shutters so that the bathroom door could be open but they could still see outside, and Mimi could get in and out at will. They could climb over the baby gate at that age, but the screens were too tall for them for a few more weeks. So the bi-fold bathroom door is pushed all the way open with a pile of toys and a track toy pushed up against it.

He's ready to play! — He’s ready to play!

Usually I time my vintage photos with the month of the year. These photos were taken in September, not April, but I’ll be posting an essay about Jelly Bean today and remembered these photos. The bathroom was his favorite room all his life, from the time I moved them into there from the studio as fosters in August 2007 through a complete renovation a few years later, Bean was in the sink, on the windowsill or batting toys around in the tub.

One of these days I’ll find a negative scanner that’s a decent quality and won’t have to be scanning the prints anymore!

Vintage photos from other years

Best Friends, 1990

Reference photo of Moses and Fawn. — Reference photo of Moses and Fawn, best friends.

Moses and Fawn were inseparable when Fawn was a kitten; here they are relaxing after a strenuous wrestling session, close enough friends to settle their differences and share the one spot of sunshine in the room. … The sun on them is like a spotlight holding the two of them together against the darker background.

That’s what I had to say in the early 90s when I painted this photo of the two of them and also set up my portfolio album. I took the photo in the spring of 1990, and I moved into this house in October that year. I had to be practically lying on the floor, and it was a testament to how far Moses had come along in socializing that she didn’t get up and run under the bed when I did that. Fawn loved any sort of attention, but typically she’d come over to see what I was doing. So I don’t really know how I got this photo with my old fully manual film camera, but I have to hand it to the girls for that success.

Moses had joined us in 1987 and Fawn was born in that very room in April 1988. After Fawn’s overactive kittenhood, she and the quiet and reserved former feral Moses became best friends. They were close in age but even though Fawn had settled down they still couldn’t be more different in character.

Moses had been an older feral kitten who my niece grabbed in her neighborhood and I brought her here long before I knew a thing about feral cats and socialization and TNR. She adapted well and was always trustful with me, but she was not one to sleep in the middle of the floor, or in any way draw attention to herself.

Fawn, on the other hand, was a purrformance artist and wanted credit for everything. She was curious and adventurous and got herself on top of everything, including the transom windows when I had them open—I never figured out how she did that, but when I heard her meow-for-attention I would go to find her on top of lots of different things all over the house. She was generally a talker too, always an opinion.

But the two found wonderful companionship in each other and had a deep bond of trust. Some day I will have to make another set of prints from the negatives from this roll of photos where I can see there are other photos of the two of them.

The painting “Best Friends”

I know that I was very inspired by the contrast of the sunlight and darkness on these two, and the way the two were spotlighted by it, when I took the photo. That was what also inspired the portrait of them that I painted from this photo. The painting of “my first feral” Moses and Fawn from “my first litter” is one of my first paintings after I’d moved to this house and started building my portfolio toward offering commissioned pet portraits. You can click on the image below to read about that painting.

Best Friends, pastel on burgundy Canson Mi Tientes paper, 9 x 24, 1992 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

Vintage photos from other years

Moses and Forsythia, 2005

For many years Moses was my backyard cat. Even in winter she would insist on going out on the deck on sunny mornings, and as soon as snow or ice cleared she liked to take a little walk. I knew her arthritis was painful and she wouldn’t tolerate supplements; beyond that there wasn’t much pain relief available for her. But her daily thermonuclear treatments really did help her, and she thoroughly enjoyed them. The gentle walks around the yard, up and down the steps to the deck, helped to exercise her joints.

This would be Moses’ last spring, though I didn’t know it at the time. She was 18 years old, and unless you saw her somewhat hobbled gait you’d never know she was that old. She was a little dehydrated, indicated by her slightly clumpy fur, and I was giving her occasional doses of subcutaneous fluids. Her weight was good, her appetite was excellent, and she managed her day for her comfort.

I enjoyed our alone time, and this special time she and I shared outside each morning and sometimes afternoon. The more I was learning about feline behavior and about feral cats the more I understood this gentle quiet cat I’d lived with for those 18 years, but not known some of the basics of her behavior. I had always simply considered her a quiet cat, not realizing that feral cats didn’t meow and were often very hard to read, not communicating in the same way as my socialized cats.

But I had come to learn Moses’ signs of happiness: closing her eyes then looking at me and blinking, emitting a soft, breathy purr while breathing a little more rapidly than usual, and swishing her tail back and forth. Here she sat on the bottom step, the sun on her back and hips, slowing closing and opening her eyes and purring, and there was that tail. It looks like a pleasant morning, not unlike today when I was outside with Mimi, except it’s a lot neater in the photo and Mimi and I will get to that. I stood off to the side and took a photo of Moses every so often as we simply, quietly, enjoyed it.

Earlier I had taken photos of her sleeping on the mat outside the back door, in the sun on the deck, something she loved to do first thing in the morning. One of the ways I know these photos were taken at about this time were the forsythia, the first forget-me-nots seen in the bottom of the photo above, and the fact I also took a digital photo of her on the mat on this same day, seen in yesterday’s “from the archive” post. I guess I couldn’t stop photographing her.

Moses sunning herself right outside the door.

Vintage photos from other years

Those Were the Days, 1998

Sophie supervising from atop the computer monitor.

Sophie is comfortably perched on the computer monitor watching me work from a convenient vantage point. Loafing with her paws tucked under, nice and cozy on one of those old heat-producing monitors, she could stay there all day, or all night as it were at this time in my career because I was still working my day job at this point so I was likely working on a freelance project. At least she was polite enough to keep her big fluffy tail out of the way. Pretty Sophie, she was always near me, and that meant that Cookie was probably there too, probably on my desk, because at this point Sophie and Cookie were a team, keeping the human at work.

Those were the days of gearing up for leaving the day job, and I had about as much work freelance as I did at my day job. That was quite a schedule to keep up with, and I was always glad for my feline supervisors all over my desk or drafting table as I worked my way to my freedom from a day job.

Remember those big old clunky computer monitors that were about 21″ deep front to back? And, the household felines would remind you, nice and warm? They were the purrfect spot for the snoopervisor to observe the human’s production, even better than today because kitty could look down on the human. Yessss.

And the artwork on the walls—there is “Sleeping Beauty” above and to the right, where she had been from the time I moved into this house. Below and to the right is the edge of “Sunbath”, and it’s still in that spot today. The other paintings are ones I sold not long after, one a polar bear and one some flowers.

Other April Vintage Photos Shared

My Studio Window, Spring 1995

My first black cat, Kublai, sits on the windowsill in the sun in my studio, watching me work, sometime in March or April 1995.

Seeing my cats on the windowsill of the room I designated as my studio has been a view I’ve enjoyed since I moved in here. It’s my spare bedroom, and though it hasn’t always been completely an art studio as it is now for all that time, it was always my room for creative work. And my cats have always been available for supervisory duties. And as we know, seeing my cats in the sun has also inspired a lot of artwork.

It’s also one of the sunniest rooms in the house, especially when I first moved in and hadn’t planted my river birches near the corner of the house to give light shade to the room. My spruce, just outside, was then, as now, an avian high-rise, but was young enough to have green branches all around where now a good bit of the shaded sides are bare of needles.

But watching my cats sunbathe was always one of my favorite things to see, as I looked up from whatever I was doing to see one or more on the windowsill. I have very few photos of Kublai because he was usually riding around on my shoulders or he sat next to me in whatever I was doing, so these good photos are precious. And on this date not only did I have my heart cat there to observe, but in the photo above you’ll see there is another cat to the right of him.

Never far from me then or any time later in all the 20 years she was with me, Cookie, likely learning from Kublai as the one to grow into his spot as my best friend a year or so after he left us, and always near. And both still near, in my heart.

Photos From the Archives and Vintage Photos

Photos pulled “From the Archives” were taken by one or another digital camera of mine between 2002 and, well, yesterday, but usually they are older than that, and I had never had the chance to feature them. Vintage Photos are from my film archives back to 1983 when I purchased my Pentax K-1000 camera. They’re a fun way to “introduce” other members of my feline family who came and went before I began blogging, and to illustrate my feline family in general from days gone by.

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Compositions in Black and Green Greeting Cards

Jelly Bean is the inspiration for and star of this set of greeting cards. Read more and purchase.

Copyright

All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission, although links to your site are more than welcome and are shared. Please ask if you are interested in using and image or story in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of an image or a product including it, check my animal and nature website Portraits of Animals to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.