Li Ward photographer of pets and weddings. Fat Orange Cat Studio is a fresh and candid boutique photography service in Boston, Massachusetts.

Yeah! Bingley is so ferocious yet thanks to film, is creamy soft at the same time. Turns out, he’s creamy soft in real life too! Like Boursin cheese!

Kodak BW400 & Fujipro 400H

Our handsome, orange hero sought out a warm patch of sunlight coming in from the skylight in our bedroom. Which was a mess. Still is a mess. But you can’t see the detritus all around him because I spot metered on him in the very bright light, rendering the rest of the frame black. He’s on his duck rug, floating through space and time!

Bunny, in the tub, where he’s drawn a bubble bath for two…

VanBuren, in the boudoir, where a neck massage awaits…

Happy Valentine’s Day!

OH and Happy Chinese New Year too!

The cats are getting up there in age. I think at 13-ish years, they are officially old, if not elderly. So it’s no surprise that most of the time, the cats are like this:

Occassionally though, something lights the little kitten wick hidden underneath their fair bellies, and when that happens, they’re like this!

Their cat fights can get vicious! There’s muffled cries, tufts of fur flying everywhere, and angry, puffy tails. Well, one angry, puffy tail. Bunny’s nubby tail is such that it cannot puff. It cannot puff.

They fight every now and then and it’s always so funny. I love the way their paws separate into little furry hands and the shape their mouths make when they get the air knocked out of them. Their urge to wrestle though happen unexpectedly or in too-short spurts, and almost always when the camera is in the other room. When I do happen to have my camera within reach, just the act of turning it on takes too long, or if I manage to get that far, me creeping in close distracts them from fighting that they stop as soon as I’m ready to shoot.

I think I have to go all NatGeo on them and wait inside a box in order to catch them in action.

But one pretty good indicator that a rumble is coming is if there’s a cat in the litterbox. The sound of one cat finishing up his business and scratching the box alerts the other to get into position for an ambush at the bathroom door. A mad fight ensues. I happened to be ready this day to document the initial ambush of Veebs. He was doing his thing and scratching madly at the side of the box (stupid cat) and I watched Bunny lower himself into stalk mode. Game ON! Camera’s set, finger’s on the shutter.

But it was still so hard to photograph them! They would swipe, do nothing, swipe, do nothing, run, sit, sit, sit, lunge. During their periods of inactivity I would bring the camera down from my face, and that was precisely when they would suddenly lunge at each other. Crazy unpredictable buggers.

Here they are hopping around with dilated pupils. I really wanted an all out thrown-down but this will do.

^ Note that Veebs has all paws off the ground in the third shot, ha ha!

Puffy tail!!

The quality of these photos isn’t so great. High shutter speed in a dark, litter-filled hallway (I was about to vacuum it up when they started fighting), and a lot of cropping because I stood back to shoot. But you get the idea. They crack me up. I have so, so many photos of them sleeping/lounging/sitting. So the goal for this year is to catch more of them in action, before they become too infirmed to move.

Bunny and Veebs rang in the new year with a little change of sleeping venue. I moved their cat bed from the office upstairs and placed it on top of the radiator cover in the living room. An extra cozy room with a view! Dan joked that by morning we would have a savory cat pie all cooked up. It started snowing and I caught Veebs taking a break from his pre-nap bath to admire the falling flakes (and then later that night, the New Year Eve’s fireworks. Although he wasn’t really too thrilled with that). Later Dan and I ventured outdoors for a little winter walk and mini photo shoot. Eee! I love shooting in the snow! So crisp, clean and bright. Boston looked like a large-scale gingerbread town dusted in confectioner’s sugar and white frosting. I feel like this is really the first time I’m understanding my camera well enough to appreciate the beautiful lighting given off by the snow.

I’m looking forward to more snowy shoots in 2010!