{"id":9512,"date":"2013-01-10T13:27:18","date_gmt":"2013-01-10T18:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/?p=9512"},"modified":"2013-01-13T12:50:55","modified_gmt":"2013-01-13T17:50:55","slug":"its-not-all-purrs-and-naps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/2013\/01\/10\/its-not-all-purrs-and-naps\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Not All Purrs and Naps …"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Windsordi’s Feral Cat as GIF, by aforgrave, on Flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

You all think I have such an easy life,<\/em>
\n Endless days of napping on comfy sunlit carpet,<\/em>
\n Free tasty fish food,<\/em>
\n Fresh water,<\/em>
\n Attention when I allow it,<\/em>
\n And independence and own-time all the rest.<\/em>
\n You only see me when I want.<\/em>
\n And maybe you see me as spoiled.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s not all purrs and naps for a cat.<\/em><\/p>\n

We’re the ones who notice first that the litter box needs cleaning.<\/em>
\n You don’t see our near-escapes with unfriendly doggies,<\/em>
\n You don’t see the Evil in trees that draw us in and don’t let go.<\/em>
\n Imagine being spurned and avoided because YOUR fur is a certain colour and you happen to walk ahead of someone.<\/em>
\n YOU try fearing water and only having your tongue to keep YOU clean! Hairballs are like a major near-death experience for us, and all you worry about is that little mess on the floor!<\/em>
\n We all deplore having litter of kitties with an absentee father and not knowing if you can provide for them or see them through the winter.<\/em>
\n And to be unwanted \u2026. or homeless \u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n

Maybe you could see things a little differently, and cut us some slack?<\/em>
\n It’s not all purrs and naps for a cat.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now.<\/em>
\n About that litter box.<\/em>
\n Can’t you get me something with a flush action?<\/em><\/p>\n

The poem above was written yesterday for The Daily Create<\/a> of\u00a0January 9th: tdc367<\/a>: “Make a poem that casts cats in a glamourous life.”<\/p>\n

I’d already started GIF<\/strong> fing Windsordi<\/a>‘s Feral Cat sequence (eight lives left, by Windsordi, on Flickr<\/a>)
\nafter seeing it on Tuesday afternoon. And so once The Daily Create prompt came along, I was under the gun to get the GIF done to go along with it.<\/p>\n

This GIF was a lot of work. While the original images look similar, not all were shot with the same zoom or angle, and so there was considerable work necessary to choose a proper reference frame, match up the ice, and ensure that there was only one cat per frame. All told, I think I have something like 18 layers of bits for what represents only seven visible frames. However, the file size is nice for this one — 164K for seven frames at 256 colours.<\/p>\n

There are some artifacts of my process visible in the finished product — in the end, I just had to call a stop and declare it done. I’m still working on my understanding of how Photoshop tracks changes to a layer in one frame as opposed to changes in another. \u00a0We’ll get that, too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You all think I have such an easy life, Endless days of napping on comfy sunlit carpet, Free tasty...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[235,15,46,42,49],"tags":[298,218,322,297,1078,323,28,217,227,23,325,324],"class_list":["post-9512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animated-gif-ds106assignments","category-ds106","category-imaginages","category-koans-of-poems","category-thedailycreate","tag-windsordi","tag-animatedgif","tag-cat","tag-diane-bedard","tag-ds106","tag-feral-cat","tag-free-verse","tag-gifestivus2012","tag-giffest","tag-ice","tag-poem","tag-windsor-di"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2UvWF-2tq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9512"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9543,"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9512\/revisions\/9543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}