Tag Archives: Templeton

Love & Loss

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Our cat Templeton in front of my 15 in. Powerbook

After the long writeup about workflow in the previous post, one more thought about tools. This is a picture of Templeton with the 15″ Powerbook I referenced in that post, my favorite computer of all time until my current MacBook Pro.

The picture was taken in January 2006 while Templeton was recuperating from surgery to remove the sewing needle he swallowed right before we left on Christmas vacation. He had to be kept from running and jumping, and isolated from Scout, so one of us stayed with him in the guest room while the other stayed with Scout. He had to wear a plastic cone to keep him from pulling out his stitches, but we gave him supervised time with it off so he could relax and clean his fur away from the incision.

I left the room for a brief moment and came back to find him sitting at my laptop, paws on the trackpad as though he was settled in for work. What he had really done was an old Templeton standby, though.

He stole my spot.

Templeton and my 15″ Powerbook. I loved them both. I miss one. Important as they are, tools are just tools.

A Slow Return

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Our cat Templeton sniffing the air

Templeton died a few years ago, long before I had an iPhone, but since I gave the other pets the Instagram treatment, it only seemed fair to upload one of my favorite pictures of him onto the iPhone and give it a go. I was thinking of a funny moment with him the other day and burst out laughing, I felt a bit self-conscious but consoled myself that the other riders on the train had probably seen stranger things.

Updates here have been pretty few and far between the past few months, partly due to long hours at work, but hopefully I’ll be a bit better now that things have calmed down. But the other part of the equation is that the Canon 7D has ruined my life.

Not that I don’t love it, it’s by far the best camera I’ve ever owned and I’ve had a great deal of fun with it the past year. It’s just that the files it creates are so much larger than my older cameras that it broke my workflow. The biggest problem is that my old laptop isn’t up to the task of processing the large images. And while I’ve known that for the past year, I couldn’t bring myself to buy a PC to solve the problem.

Most of that comes down to how much I’ve loved OS X since switching to the Mac years ago, and lately to how much I love the little iPhone. But push has come to shove, I took a large number of pictures over Christmas at Ridgefield and realized I haven’t even finished sorting, much less editing, some of my pictures from my visits last Christmas.

Since I’m not a fan of Apple’s desktops, I’ll be making my return to Windows for my photo processing machine (but keeping the MacBook for everything else). I’ve decided to build the computer this time instead of buying one, my first attempt at that, and hope to be up and running in the next couple of weeks. Can’t wait! Although the dizzying array of motherboards may drive me to take up the drink.

So before too long pictures should start coming online fast and furious. Next up will be one of my favorite images of 2010, taken on the last day of the year, but I’m tired so it will have to wait ’til the morrow. It’s not the sharpest picture, even at web sizes, but if you like eagles …

Templeton! Who Raised You?

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Our cat Templeton eating catnip with his tongue sticking out

Templeton sticking his tongue out at Scout.

To be fair to my little gray one, he was just licking his lips after chowing down on catnip, which was usually followed by him laying on his back on the concrete sidewalk and wiggling around, a legacy now claimed by little Sam. While he is definitely his own cat, he does share many of Templeton’s traits.

He’s a full-on no-apologies I’ll-sleep-on-your-legs-until-you-can’t-feel-them lap cat, just like Templeton was.

He sticks his head out the door to greet me the moment I come home, just like Templeton did.

He then goes downstairs to his food bowl and meows loudly to be fed, meows even if his bowl has plenty of food but he can actually see a bit of the bottom of the bowl, meows just because he likes the comfort of having me come down and go through the motions of feeding him. Just like Templeton did.

He’s an excellent groomer and yet never has hairballs, just like … well, Templeton was an excellent groomer.

Ball Game

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Our cat Templeton licking catnip off the floor

We have a little plastic ball that you can pull apart and put catnip inside. Templeton loved to chase the ball around, but unfortunately it sometimes split apart when it impacted the wall and sent the catnip flying. This was especially true of the house in Portland where he really got the ball moving on the hardwood. In this case, the ball rolled into the bathroom where it split apart.

Both Templeton and Scout immediately converged on their liberated prize, Templeton sprawled out on the floor to lick up the easy pickings before rolling around to bathe in its aroma. He kept his playful spirit even to his very last days.

Gargoyle

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Our cat Templeton peering down from my bookcase

Templeton used to love to sleep atop the bookcases but as he aged he had trouble jumping that high. If he sat beside my bookcase to indicate he wanted up, I’d place him up there for a catnap and get him down when he woke up. On this particular day, I climbed on top of a chair so that we’d be eye to eye when I took the picture.