Always a great joy and privilege to photograph the next generation of cat lovers in the United States. I’ve known Melissa and Jackson for quite some time (we photographed their weddings several years ago and Melissa was my very first sale at Familiar Dolls back in 2020!). We keep in touch by talking about cats and running into each other at Target. Our cats are super important to us and so it’s with great joy that I see Melissa and Jackson imparting their love of the feline community onto their daughter. In typical cat fashion, Pluto and Toffee joined us for a lot of this shoot by watching whatever I was doing from 10 feet away, and in typical almost-toddler fashion, their daughter crawled excitedly toward them whenever she could (because they’re CUTE). When we weren’t admiring cats, we were busy admiring ducks or herons, books, bubbles, water tables, and plants on walks. Happy to spend a morning with this beautiful family!
I absolutely love this crew! Geoff and I photographed Dwight and Laurie’s wedding back in the day, and now Laurie is my beloved dentist! It’s been so cool watching their family grow and watching their daughter become the cat-crazed child that she is (their son is now also showing signs of intense feline fandom). I was extremely excited for this shoot because it’s been a year since I saw them, and last time I saw them, all their daughter and I did was talk cats. So I was pretty pumped to see my cat friend again, and she did not disappoint. There was even more cat art up this time in their playroom, and there was even a Fisher Price plane filled entirely with cats. She boarded the cats on the plane, and unboarded them, and put them in little “rooms” made of magnet tiles, and did not want me to photograph this. She said the cats were tired and sleeping and she could not keep boarding and unboarding them, but she also didn’t want to me photograph them sleeping in their rooms or getting on or off the plane. I had to respect this – the cats must be famous or have some sort of privacy clause agreement – but the many rubber cats on the older Fisher Price plane was one of the best things I had ever seen.
Their son, also extremely excited about cats but also excited about trucks and me (!) and wagons, also put a bunch of little rubber cats inside his Jeep and drove the cats around. He also really likes those waving maneki-neko Japanese cats, and this beautiful wooden truck that his grandpa made for him. He’s such a sweet boy and was very concerned that I would not be following them into the backyard for the outdoor portion of the shoot.
Then their real cat, Brie, made an appearance (their other cat Stilton did not want to join us this year), and there was intense cat hugging/cuddling. It reminded me of myself at that age with my own cat. (Laurie and Dwight – I had a full-size camcorder at the age of 6 that I made my sister use to film me on a show I wrote and directed called Catnip Live! where I would “interview” my cat with a microphone. I hope you have this in your future). It was a full-on cat fest with cat people and I’m glad I was there to document it.
Aww, you guys. Last time I photographed Lindsay and Rishi was in 2019 when they were pregnant with their first daughter. Now they have two insanely cute daughters and are back in the area after several moves in the last decade, one of which was abroad. Lindsay and I kept in touch during those times because I became quite internet-attached to Bogart, her cat, who I had never met in real life but felt like I knew in my soul. And while I unfortunately never got the opportunity to meet Bogart, I now have finally met Roxie, their dachshund, who was just as impressive in person as she is online. In fact, even more so, because this is the very first dog in my entire 38 years of life who I’ve ever seen truly beg. Like, sit on her hind legs, stand up, put her paws together and move her hands back and forth beg. Like a little circus dog. The best part? Lindsay and Rishi never taught her how to do that – she just came that way. And now, all these years later (Roxie is a dignified senior), she still does it. And it’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen. It was so much fun to photograph this crew in their home and looking for treasures on a walk (their daughters collect these treasures in a treasure box in the garage, which is a beautiful group of perfectly preserved deceased butterflies, cicadas, feathers, leaves, pinecones, grasshoppers, etc). And another Familiar Dolls cat doll may have made an appearance towards the end…#shamelessselfpromotion.
