Tuesday, April 08, 2008

An exercise in the division of a two-dimensional plane (with a curious onlooker)

Sometimes I walk around with a camera and peer at life through the viewfinder. More often than not, something will appear before me that seems to be worth snapping the shutter.

Such is the case with this photo. The triangular patch of sunlight formed a diagonal division of the picture plane. The cat’s body is perpendicular to the hypotenuse of the triangle. The upturned face, gorgeous green eyes and cute little forepaws are a bonus. Not a bad composition. Not planned. It just happened that way.

A note about the cat: She showed up several years ago as a stray on our doorstep. It was winter and she did not have the thick fur of an outdoor cat – someone just wished her luck and dumped her in our neighborhood. She arrived injured, cold and hungry. We took her in, had her fixed up (in more ways than one) and welcomed her to our home. Our now music-major college-age son named her Poly (short for Polyphonic) because of her distinctive two-toned meow. Her meow registered in perfect fifths in the key of A (I worked it out on a guitar after listening to her meow one day). Think of the first two notes of the song, Feelings.

Poly is at a ripe old age now and is suffering from heart disease. The left side of her heart has enlarged, allowing blood to pool in it and form clots. Occasionally, those clots will escape the heart and lodge in her extremities, cutting off circulation and causing paralysis. This has happened several times since last Christmas. Our vet has given us medication to give her to enlarge her blood vessels and help dissolve the clots when the paralysis occurs. So far so good. But there will come a day when the medicine will no longer work and there will be nothing else we can do for her.

It’s been a good run with this cat. Totally unplanned for and spontaneous. Just like this photo of her.

1 comment:

Wanda said...

That's a great shot, and Poly is a beautiful cat...love her eyes.

I'm glad she has you as care givers in her older age.