Tink

Last week, I showcased the three pictures of mine which have made Flickr's Explore pages.  Today I want to talk about the cat in the second picture, Tink.

Tink was my aunt and uncle's cat.  They moved out of province and weren't able to take him with them.  We agreed to take him as a trial, to see how our cat, Sasha, would get a long with him.  Of course, as those things go, once he was living with me there was not way I was letting that cat go.  He became my best friend, spending almost every night with me except for the few nights I was away traveling.  Sasha, being Sasha, never liked him, but she slowly let him get closer before she would hiss and growl.

But then the unthinkable happened: I left for Duluth just for the day on Monday, August 21st.  When I left in the morning, Tink seemed absolutely fine.  But a few hours before I got home, he passed away quite suddenly.

From what we can gather, Tink was part Maine Coon.  Maine Coon's have a genetic predisposition to a form of heart disease, where they will seem fine to their owners until their hearts fail.  I don't think there was anything we could have done for him except what we did: we gave him a loving home for the two months he was with us.  He was an awesome cat and I still miss him terribly, even three weeks later.

I've put together an album on Flickr for him, with all of the pictures I took of him and his stuff while he was living with me.  There are a few other pictures of him on my Flickr account as well from when he was living with my aunt and uncle.

Explored!

So it finally happened - I made it into Flickr's Explore pages!  And even more exciting, it's happened three times so far!


The first one was "3 Blooms - March 15 2014 2," a picture I took of my mom's orchid blooming.  This one made it to #79 on the March 15th Explore page.  It has over 9000 views, beating out "Blurry Sasha" (my reigning champion since 2010) by about 1000 views.


The second one was "Tink, Day 4."  That one climbed to #110on May 22nd, 2014.  It's currently got just over 6000 views, about 2000 less than "Blurry Sasha."


Finally was "New Camera!"  I really don't know why everyone was excited about this one, but it climbed to #6 on July 29th, 2014.  It's actually got over 20,000 views right now, beating out "Blurry Sasha" by about 11,000 views!

Your Worst Shot 2010

While I was choosing my Best Shot of 2010 (to add to the Flickr group), I came across this pic in my photostream. I remember taking it: it was the day I filmed this video of Sasha and I first tried taking a few pics of her. Unfortunately she was moving too fast for this shot and it was super blurry. I thought it looked funny so I decided to post it on Flickr anyway.

In the Your Best Shot 2010 group, there was a discussion on your worst shot of 2010. Hands down, I thought it was this one. So I didn't think anything of posting it to the thread. As I said in the discussion:

When my dad scratches a certain spot on my cat's back, she starts sticking
her tongue out. It's really funny to watch. I was trying to catch the
moment, but the lighting was bad and my camera failed horribly. I ended
up posting the picture because I thought it was funny at the time, but
now everytime I see it go by in my organizer, I keep wondering what I
was thinking when I posted it.

A few people in the discussion thought it was funny, but then I thought that
was that.

And then I wandered onto Flickr a few minutes ago and noticed some new comments on "Blurry Sasha." Looking at the times, these comments were from 18 minutes ago to 44 seconds ago. I was really bewildered until I glanced at the Flickr blog to see Sasha's blurry face staring back
at me. It seems "Your Worst Shot 2010" was featured on the Flickr blog, with Sasha being one of the prominent pictures! I guess it's not the best way to make it on the Flickr blog, but my stats are just exploding right now! As of right now I've had over 3,000 views on my photos, with over
half of that on Sasha's pic (and almost 60 comments, which range from people laughing and people finding it creepy)! "Blurry Sasha" has now surpassed "Boba Fett" on everything except Interestingness (it's in second for that).

If you have a moment, take a look at the whole thread. It's got some pretty funny pictures and explanations!

Cat Pics!

Today I went to my mom's work to take pics of their office cat, Chomp. Chomp's been living in the office for the last few weeks. I'd heard all about her and wanted to take some pics of her.

Well, today really wasn't my day for taking pics of cats. I took a lot of pics of Chomp, and when I got home I took even more pics of Sasha, for a combined total of 65 cat pics. The 9 nicest ones are now on flickr. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them are blurry; for some reason my camera didn't want to focus on the cats, but instead focussed on the floor behind them. I think it might have been because I was a bit too close and I was using the Sports mode rather than the Program mode that I usually use. Program is a lot better, as I can take macro pics, but it's too slow. So I guess I have to take the good with the bad.

Last Gallery for the Night

I originally had only 14 pictures in My Your Best Shot 2009 Cats gallery. So I decided to bring it up to the full 18. Unfortunately, there were so many nice cat pics in Your Best Shot 2009 that I couldn't decide amongst them. So I built a second gallery of cat pics. Enjoy!

Your Best Shot 2009 Big Cats

This was the first gallery that I created. It originally had only 5 shots. I took a few minutes and finished it. It now has the full 18 I'm allowed to put into a gallery. There were some spectacular shots of big cats in Your Best Shot 2009, and I wanted to put them all together. Enjoy!

Flickr Galleries!!!!!

A few days ago, I discovered Flickr Galleries! Galleries are collections of up to 18 pictures taken by other people that you put together however you'd like. I started making them out of the Your Best Shot 2009 group. The first gallery that I made has some of the big cat (lions, tigers, leopards, etc) pictures from the group. The second gallery I made has some of the fantastic house cat shots from the group. I think this second gallery is better than the first one, just bcause I have a better idea of what I'm doing. The third gallery I made has nothing to do with the Your Best Shot group. Instead, I decided to make a Star Wars gallery. But after I had brought about 8 pictures together and realized that 7 of them were Stormtrooper pictures, I switched it to a Stormtrooper gallery. Please check all three galleries out, ands stay tuned for more! And thanks to everyone featured in the galleries (and those who didn't make the cut - it was tough!) for sharing their fantastic shots!

Here's a link to all the galleries that I make. Enjoy!