Oliver is a dramatic boy and has dramatic whiskers. The longest whisker I've ever found from him was 5 1/4" long. I collect them, obviously.

And here is a twitchy whisker video.

Classical music seems like a good choice. Not all recordings are public domain, but because much of the compositions are old as hell it's easier to find older recordings that are out of copyright. Here's a list!

No quarantine. Just like flying with a pet from one US state to another. The rescue will pay for extra costs if there are any, but I didn't have any with my flight.

A volunteer from the receiving rescue met me at the airport when I landed and picked him up before our luggage even came out on the carousel.

I love when they're interested in something and the lil whiskers perk forward :')

Do it do it do it!

Hi Sadie, I love your ear whiskers

Yep. I keep mine in a teeny jar that used to hold watch parts. It's my whisker jar.

You're unhinged I love it

Thank you!

I love this, reminds me of a bonfire. What materials did you use/what was your process if you didn't mind sharing?

Curled whiskers to match the curled feet, 10/10 no notes

Hell yeah! It's an alternative photography process. You mix up a chemical emulsion and paint it on some watercolor paper (or fabric or wood or anything porous). Then you can arrange a composition on the paper with stuff like plants (what we focus on for this class) but other stuff like have or loose knit fabrics, objects with neat shapes, whatever. You can also take photos or do digital design and print out negatives on transparencies.

Once you're ready to go, you expose them in the sun! There's a lot of different factors in how long you expose them for–time of day, time of year, cloud cover, the thickness of your design materials, the pH of your paper or fabric, and a bunch of other stuff I know I haven't learned about yet. In my class we watch everyone's prints and I explain the different phases you can see them go through. I talk about what changes I'm looking for and factors I'm considering. I'll tell each person when I think theirs is done and what has led me to that decision. It gets easier with practice, but I always tell people it's a great art form for "recovering perfectionists" because I'm always learning something new.

Once they're exposed, you just rinse in a plain water bath and you get that awesome blue. This was about 20 minutes after rinsing, but they continue to get deeper in color over the next day or so as the pigments oxidize.

Sneezing directly into your cat's face is a nice role reversal

I know right?? Whenever he's in a really deep sleep he nurses like that and it makes me wanna cry. First of all because it's just objectively cute. But also because he was taken from his mom at only 2 weeks old, so I think he's dreaming of her 😭

Kitten tax

Thank you so much!

Ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide. Don't bathe in it but I've never had any irritation from splashes on my skin that I wash off, or from rinsing with no gloves (the final rinse is in plain water). Don't mix it with a lot of acid (not sure why you would) because then it makes cyanide gas, but in the process of making cyanotypes, very very safe!

I've never used enlargers for this process. They're exposed with UV light so you'd have to use a UV bulb with it and from my brief Google, there's varying success. When I do photos, I print the negatives full size on transparency film and expose in the sun.

It was actually all adults except for Miriam, but that wasn't her print–her dad made that one. 😅 Hers is in the row below on the right.

Oh and now you've given me another thing to try! So these nice ways to finish seams without a serger.

The chemicals used in cyanotype are very safe! Safer than traditional photo development, even B&W. I never wear gloves, even.

You can get started with minimal knowledge–all you really need to read is the directions on the back of the bottle. To lean the intricacies obviously takes a lot longer, mostly just experience and practice. Beyond the basics, when I have a question I'll Google. Picked up some cool tidbits on Reddit. But mostly I just experiment!

Yessss ya freak! How many cats do you have and how long have you had them? That's a hefty collection!