My Cats (and My New Camera)
2009-11-07 14:04 - General
A short while ago, I started working on cleaning up my apartment. Getting rid of the junk that I've accumulated, that has just enough value to not feel like junk. Anything I can, I plan on selling on eBay. What won't sell, I'll try to give away. What no one will take will sadly head to a landfill.
Along the way, I decided to get a new camera. I hemmed and hawed for a while, and after looking at what I could get for what price (and coming upon some unexpected money, including a belated birthday card (thanks Oma!)) I decided to splurge. I went for a DSLR, which means high-end, but got what amounts to basically the cheapest DSLR I could find, the Sony α230. So half of the point of this post is to play with my new camera.
The other half is to write down, because my brain is so feeble, the exact birthdays (and thus age) of my two cats. Every once in a while, when I try to remember how old my cats are, I can't. It's a little complicated, as I'll explain. First, to continue blabbing about my camera, you can see at a Picasa Web Album called "My Cats" the raw unedited .JPG files that came from the camera. Reinforcing one of the reasons I decided to splurge: it can definitely squeeze out better low-light indoors images. Click below for the larger versions.
This is my first cat: Tegs. I adopted her almost exactly a year after moving out into my first apartment, from my parents' house, in October of 2004. When I adopted her, I was told they thought she was 12-14 months old. I decided to put her birthday on the autumnal equinox, which makes it September 22nd, 2003. So, today, she is just over six years old.
Since she's an adopted rescue cat, I don't really know what breed she is. She is definitely a tabby. The vet used the generic phrase "american longhair" to describe her.
This is my second cat: Brandy. I had Tegs for almost a year and a half when I decided it would be nice (both for her and for me) to adopt a sister for her, some company while I'm away at work each day. Rather than randomly visiting shelters and picking whoever seemed nice, this time I picked a particular breed to seek ahead of time: the russian blue.
It was late April of 2006 when I adopted Brandy. She was described as being about six months old, and belonged to an owner of a bar. His girlfriend apparently wasn't interested anymore, now that she wasn't a kitten. The name came from the alcohol, due to her previous owner. It stuck. Being another adoption (though not a street rescue via a shelter, like Tegs) I again had no exact birthday. I can't even remember how I came up with it, but I know I have October 25th noted down as her birthday, making the first October 25, 2005, so she is four years old as of a couple weeks ago.
