During this week’s visit to the DCAS I got to meet Summer. A really, really sweet little girl. Both little and sweet are very accurate descriptors. She’s a petite little tabby and super friendly. She warmed up to me right away. Not that the treats I was holding had anything to do with it I’m sure. She’s roughly 10 months old so she might grow a bit more yet.

The first thing that grabs your attention when you meet Summer is her intense eye colour. I think they tend more to copper but could be considered orange too.  In any case they’re gorgeous! The camera doesn’t really do them justice.

The second thing you notice is that her fur is incredibly soft. Surprisingly so. The alternating light and dark banding (agouti) on the individual hairs in her light parts have you expecting a rough texture, but that’s not the case at all … its super silky!

 

 

She is still full of kitten curiosity and energy. One of her favorite activities is watching the birds at the feeder just outside the window (excellent placement I must say! 🙂 )

 

 

Not one to stay still for very long it was only a matter of time until she found where I had left the treat package (oops!).

 

 

Shelter staff have categorized her as an ‘Orange’ Meet-Your-Match cat and that certainly matches my experience with her … affectionate, outgoing, curious … an excellent supervisor kitty!

 

 

Unfortunately Summer tends to think outside the box … if ya know what I mean … so she needs a warm barn type of environment where that won’t cause any stress with her people.

Talk to the DCAS Staff or check out Summer’s adoption info page for more details.

 

 

Photography Notes

Working in the smaller area of the communal cat room I ran into a few hiccups …

Lens selection – A few times my shorter/wider zoom was too short but I couldn’t always back up enough to focus my longer zoom. Next time I’ll take a macro lens that has a longer focal length than my short zoom and a closer minimum focusing distance than my long zoom and see how that works out. I’ll probably still feel like I have the wrong lens on half the time 😉

Lighting – The room is well lit from a normal people-working-in-the-room perspective. Windows on opposite sides help to let some daylight in. To the camera though its still on the dark side especially near the floor. I bumped the ISO up as high as 1600 at one point but that still wasn’t quite enough action stopping power to keep up with a jumping kitten. Yes, I could have gone higher on the ISO and may do so next time just to see how noisy things get. I had a flash unit with me but decided not to use it for a couple of reasons … 1) I know it won’t recycle fast enough when I’m wanting a burst of frames; and 2) there were other cats in the room (at least one is from a feral colony and is slowly being socialized to people) and they were being pretty shy. I didn’t want to add to their stress by having a flash constantly going off in their space. There are some very nice continuous light options available that are light weight and cool to the touch with low power consumption that I have started looking into. Next step is to phone around to the rental places and see what’s available locally.