Leonardo’s Eccentricities

My cat is my soulmate. No offense to other cats (I love all cats!), but Leonardo is the greatest. He’s cuddly, communicative, and I swear he looks straight into my souls sometimes. He’s also very, very weird and a constant source of amusement.

Leonardo doesn’t much like cameras, but he’s been my primary photographic subject for years. Between the thousands of photos I’ve taken of him, I’ve captured a lot of weird faces and weird situations.

There are the inevitable “pirate” pictures.

I’ve caught him mid-meow (as I said earlier, he’s very talkative). I like to imagine this captioned, “Let me sing you the song of my people.”

Yawning and cleaning himself at the same time–illustrating how much he really does not want to sit for my camera.

And sometimes he looks like a demon when he yawns.

Sometimes he hangs out in the tub begging for water.

And then there’s this…

What to say about this? Leonardo was spending a lot of time napping on the refrigerator (and thus waking us up in the middle of the night too frequently), so we put this empty box in the way to discourage his napping.

After a couple weeks he sat in the box. Then he started really settling in, or at least trying to. He rearranges himself often in his little box attempting to get comfortable.

This was purely accidental on our part and remains really, really funny. He gets so squished up and tangled stuffed into the little box!

(Note: the last four photos were taken with my cell phone. He only climbs into his box at night–usually while we’re cooking dinner–when it’s too dark to use my real camera.)

The Evolution of Lazar Wolf

I’ve just realized I am horribly overdue for an update on my pet turtle, Lazar Wolf (so named after Tzeitel’s almost-husband in Fiddler on the Roof). Last you heard, he was a tiny baby with four feet. A lot has happened since then.

Most remarkably, his foot fell off. You can kind of see in the last photo from the post I linked above–his front left foot had gotten crushed. Once we noticed how bad it was, he weren’t sure if he was going to make it through. Then the foot started decaying, and we tried to not get too attached. He was so, so tiny I didn’t see how his body could keep going.

But Lazar Wolf made it through and keeps growing. He is a pretty dexterous guy with his little nub and loves to swim.

Lazar Wolf as he is today:

Lazar Wolf in his tank in March 2011:

He is much too big for that tank now:

Fitting on top of his log is a bit of a struggle as well:

Since he doesn’t have much room to move around (and has a pretty tiny brain), he gets himself into sticky and frustrating situations. Sometimes he looks at me accusingly.

Despite being overdue for a new tank, Lazar Wolf has a good life. We weren’t overly enthused when my dad recommended we take him home as a pet, but things have changed since then. I never would have expected myself to appreciate him for his personality–he is a turtle, after all–but he really is pretty funny. His grumpy little face is so endearing!

Leonardo’s Christmas

Another blog post from your favorite and most handsom internet cat, Leonardo.

My Christmas was horrible. To quote the wise words of William Shakespeare:
“O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!”
from Hamlet (Act 1, Scene V).

See how much rest I got the last couple years? It was not the same this time. I was on edge:

Firstly, Joseph gave Alyssa a flash reflector (which she is giving very positive reviews, by the way), so they were playing with it all day long. So annoying.

My only presentâ€¦ a pair of used shoes. They don’t even fit me.

I was also given a used box. It doesn’t fit well either.

Worst of all, it snowed that day. As an indoor cat, the weather itself doesn’t bother me. But bad weather means my nemesis Cory is brought inside.

I hope everyone else had a better holiday.

Love always,

Season’s Greetings from Leonardo and Cory

It’s not worth asking how these photos happened. Let’s call it a Christmas miracle. Joseph helped me prop them up on boxes in front of the Christmas tree, which was highly confusing, and then we made all sorts of strange noises to keep their attention. The end result was so much better than we could have predicted!

I took photos of Leonardo first, and he purred the entire time. I don’t know if he just likes the attention or what. After a few minutes when we were about done he made one small meow, as if to ask if he could get down now, and then jumped down and walked off after I consented.

I’m amazed I was able to get these photos and am incredibly impressed with their expressions! Look how full of hope they are! We loved these so much we sent them out as our Christmas card, which I imagine some of our family members found strange. But most of the envelopes were addressed to cats or dogs, so it’s okay.

I have been getting a lot of grief for not including our beloved Lazar Wolf in the portrait session, but he is stressed out too easily to handle. Can this crude photoshop make up for it? He is obviously overflowing with warm thoughts of the holiday season.

The Gingers

Leonardo met a redhead in my friend Tricia! I think he knew there was something special between the two and crawled right into her lap. They made such a great match!