:-)) Sunday Cat! #939 October 12, 2025 ((-:

Welcome all to the Sunday Cat!, a weekly gathering of image makers on a subject of mutual interest, our feline friends. The Sunday Cat! has appeared each Sunday, except for a brief interruption in September, 2016, since Anton AK started the thread at DPReview on 23 September 2007. Successive thread managers have been John King, Warriormouse, Robert J, Coldamus, Robert J again (with an assist by StanTsui) and since September 2016, former lurker, me. When DPReview was threatened with closure in March 2023, the last regular Sunday Cat! there was hosted on 2 April 2023. After taking a leap of faith, the Sunday Cat! found refuge here on 9 April 2023.

Eclectic Companions of the Week!

A moment of tranquil coexistence.

~~Image by @AlanSh

As said by Warriormouse, "Photos can be more than just art, they can be memories, so come share your pictures and stories of your feline companions with us."

“Official” posting time is every Sunday at 0000 UTC. Because this is Saturday afternoon for me, posting time may vary to accommodate my schedule. I'll try to post a message if I know I will be very late. Anyone anxious to start the new week is free to do so. But if you do, please PM me so I don’t accidentally double post.

Come one, come all! Remember, all cats, all cameras welcome. Digital cats or silver halide cats, cats of metal, or cats of the wilderness. Big cats, small cats, kittens and their toys. Cats of pen and ink, cats of brush and canvas, from any time, any place. Let the Sunday Cat! be a refuge to enjoy and marvel at the magic of cats, where positive comments abound and constructive criticism is given if requested.

The Sunday Cat! is now open for mischief. :D

Last week's purrs, #938 / DPRv #130 / Sunday Cats! #30

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In Memoriam, Snowflake

Finding her forever home a decade ago, while her life has ended, she has a place forever near those who loved her and who she loved.

~~Image by @StanDisbrow

Thread Manager's Corner:
It was a sadly eventful week, Snowflake's passing and Mr. Me losing his other eye. One at least can take some heart when suffering ends. At this point, it is unknown if the loss of both eyes and chemotherapy will put an end to Mr. Me's battle with cancer. His surgery was successful and he seems to be healing up better and recovering faster than last time. But now that he lives in permanent darkness he seems less capable of navigating his environment. Even though he was blind for a week before surgery, he may have still had some input from the eye that was removed that helped him with navigation. Lacking any input now, and a collar that interferes with using his whiskers, he is struggling. I'm hoping that once he loses the collar after his stiches are removed, he'll start doing better. Let's all hope for a better week ahead.

~~~ Kim

Though small in size, the imprint they leave on our lives is huge.

Find the kitty. 😁

Hi,

Kitty is pretty well hidden in plain sight. :)

Stan

Kitty is nigh-on invisible on my little 8" tablet -- but I found her!

Hi,

I was using a cell phone. And not one of the oversized ones. Even worse. Had to blow it up as far as I could and slide the photo around for a while. ;)

Stan

Sorry to hear your bad news, you really are having a hard time at the moment. Snowflake looked like a very proud cat.

Hi,

Snowflake was a great cat. She loved to share (read: hog) the bed with us every night. That is when we miss her the most. She came over here from a neighboring farm which does large animal rescue. Horses, donkeys, mules, goats and the like. And they had a friend who was moving and couldn't keep their cat. But Snowflake didn't like their dogs, so she ran away and wound up here.

There is another runaway cat here from the neighboring farm in the other direction. She was their barn cat. Someone dumped a tomcat off there and he likes to beat up on this one. So she goes back and forth. I think she will wind up being our cat eventually. And the other folks are OK with that.

However, it is Mr Me who has the hard way to go. Cancer and then loss of both eyes. Hopefully that cures the cancer part. Also he hopefully he figures out the blind life. Won't be easy, that's for sure.

On the plus side for Mr. Me is the fact that cats are built for very low-light conditions. I had a kitty who lost the sight in both eyes, not at the same time, from high blood pressure which ruptured blood vessels in her eyes. This was back in the days before they had a treatment for kitties with hyperthyroidism. After a surprisingly short time, you would never have guessed she was blind, she got around the house so well. I am optimistic that Mr. Me will have the same positive outcome.

The day all of us dread is saying goodbye to our kitties. I don't know why sometimes, we put ourselves through all the pain

161025 kitty by softmarmotte, on Flickr

Hi,

Because of all the love all those other days. There are now 8 out back overlooking the pond. And that is just here over the past 21 years. There were others elsewhere.

The ones that get to me are those who went missing. So we don't know for sure what happened to them.

Such as Fred here, the last of ours to disappear.

Stan

Letting go is certainly hard, and being the one to end it is a difficult decision to make, especially when to do it. But the other side of that is that we can. I don't know why human medicine is so insistant that we can't help fellow humans in the same way. Nuff said).

I think of Fred often. A little over a year ago, Henry disappeared. He trotted briskly off into the back yard, and I remember saying "Gotta hot date?"

I made my peace with the facts
- that he was, at a minimum, 14 years old
- a large cat (18 pounds in his prime); outsized animals (relative to average size, 10-12# for cats) tend to have shorter lifespans
- I had had another, apparently perfectly healthy, kitty wake up dead one morning.

I read it this way: He headed out for the day, curled up later somewhere to take a nap, and never woke up. It happens. Anyway, when he vanished, I felt for you and your similar experience. Not knowing is the hardest part.

Lynne

Congratulations to our "Find the Kitty" winners! As your prize you can download the photo if you wish. 😉

I tried to help out by outputting it at 300dpi. It was taken with an 8mm fisheye lens, which no doubt did make it a bit challenging to find the kitty, but perseverance found a way. Well done!