Vintage Photo: Early Spring Garden Path With Moses, March 2005

April 19, 2026 Bernadette

“Yes?” Moses is trying to nap on that central brick path in the garden and I keep waking her up with the wheel barrow or something I need to get past her. You can bet I looked at that sweet face and found another way to get where I needed to go. Moses was my garden cat for at least a decade. I know I have film photos from 1996, but I’m pretty sure I have some from before that, and she lived to February 2006 asking to go outside for her thermonuclear treatment nearly every day, even if she was only in the sun on the deck. But as soon as it was warm enough she wanted to be on those warm bricks in the sun. She had osteoarthritis and there weren’t too many other treatments for her at that time, but apparently a good sunbath was very soothing. But she had also been a feral kitten in very poor shape when my niece finally caught her, and it could be that early feral live also called her outside.

As I’ve been toiling to rebuild my garden to its former state and finally got most of the way there I’ve had so many memories of my garden cats, so I’m going to share a few over the next few weeks, starting with Moses.

Here are a couple more from the same morning. Apparently she sat up but was still pleasantly drowsy. Her eyes are open just slightly in one photo, then completely closed in the other but she’s swiveling her ears.

From around this date in past years

The Casual One-paw Dangle, 1999

cat on stool dangling paw — Cookie demonstrates the casual one -paw dangle.

Cookie is ready for her supurrvisory role, no doubt on a Saturday morning, in spring, probably April, 1999. We’ve had a long list of pawdanglers here, but Cookie specialized in the one-paw dangle, specifically the casual one-paw dangle. Doesn’t she look casual here? Kind of leaning on her right elbow while her left tortie leg is stretched as far toward the floor as it would go. A little head-tilt, and a meatloaf in the back. I’m probably in the middle of my Saturday morning baking or something.

Backlit photography was never easy in this house and I had apparently used the flash on my film camera to counteract the bright light coming in the back door. That served to light up Cookie’s lighter areas, but oversaturate her dark areas. This was the best I could do with the print to lighten it up, but there is Cookie’s half-n-half face, keeping a close eye on me. Actually both eyes, and still the casual one-paw dangle.

cat on stool paw dangle — Cookie keeps an eye on me.

I took another photo from more of a distance and managed to get a nice silhouette with no detail. But I like Cookie’s silhouette, nice and rounded, and you can even still see in her shape the casual one-paw dangle. I don’t know that I ever distinguished that in her until other paw danglers moved in, like Bella and Mariposa, but now I know it’s classic Cookie.

That stool has been in that corner of the kitchen, or at that end of the sink, since the day I moved in here. It’s always been the feline lookout stool, where they’d sit and watch me at the sink or even the stove. The stool was handmade by a friend who learned a number of traditional crafts, and for cripe sake he cut the oak and milled it into the legs and crossbars, and even the weaving material is made of oak sapling splits. It’s lasted all these years without a sign of aging, even for all the happy scratching on it, all the sitting and having it hang out in the kitchen.

This weekend I moved it to the basement so I could sit down while I work at my workbench, just to take some pressure off my back, literally. I didn’t get a chance to sit on it, though. I got myself all set up and went to sit on it, but Mimi had beat me to it. Later I looked down to see Mr. Sunshine there. The struggle is real.

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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pastel painting of cat looking out door — “The Little Sunflower”, pastel on velour paper, 11″ x 16″, 1997 © B.E. Kazmarski

My little sunflower worships the morning sun at that same door. Read more and purchase.

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