Look at my cat / fuzzy notepad

In early December 2011, I bought a digital SLR.

In mid December 2011, I bought a cat.

You can see where this is going.

Styx is a Sphynx, one of the hairless breeds. (Wow! Just like Dr. Evil’s cat! I have never heard that before! You are so clever!) Mel already had a sphynx, Twigs, and he pretty much sold me on Sphynxes being the best cats ever. Though I think Styx might have more of a Devon Rex personality and body shape, based on Mel’s cat breed book.

I’ve accumulated a mountain of cat photos, but only a few of them have seen the light of day. Let’s fix that! And please do pardon my shoddy attempts at composition and framing and white-balance and post-processing and otherwise trying to take photography more seriously than Instagram.

Here’s Styx as a kitten. You can only really get a Sphynx from a breeder, so we had to spend a day driving all the way down to the middle of nowhere in northern Oregon, some hours east of Portland.

Since you’re here, let me tell you my cute kitten story: when we arrived, all of the kittens went to hide under the far corner of the breeder’s bed. She was several minutes into a vain attempt at coaxing them out when I turned to look around the rest of the room and saw a lone kitten sitting out in the middle of the floor, staring at us. I went over and knelt down, said hi to him, and reached out to pet him—and he tilted his head and batted in the general direction of my hand several times, rapid-fire, with this ridiculous clumsy defiance. I knew I had to have this kitten.

So, so tiny. Still at the breeder, in Mel's hand.

One of these is Styx's dad; I think it's the one with the gigantic balls.

I kept him in my room for the first few days; here he is tumbling around on my floor.

Wish the whole pillow were visible for better scale. He could sit comfortable on one palm.

Posed on our cat tree like a school portrait.

Styx makes adorable sleepy-cat faces.

Sphynxes like to snuggle up to people, though Styx only lies down on me if he feels like it.

I frequently come into my room to find this, or a pair of ears poking out the far side.

He needs a little time to get going in the mornings.

This one is only a couple days old. He sits very compactly when awake, but once he falls asleep his limbs go everywhere.

He also makes a very distinct little scowl.

Styx and Twigs like to lie together when we’re busy. Well, okay, usually Styx lies down somewhere and then Twigs sits on him.

This one's mostly included because Twigs is making such a cool face.

Twigs loves to groom everything; Styx is no exception.

We got them new matching sweaters recently. This happened two days later.

They get into their fair share of cat battles, often after Styx refuses to be Twigs’s beanbag.

The fuzzy one there is Napoleon. He does his own thing most of the time, though occasionally I catch him grooming Styx’s ears (the only fuzzy parts?).

When not busy keeping a small section of our furniture warm, Styx is usually running around at breakneck speed, flipping the fuck out all over my bed, or knocking things off my desk and looking shocked when they fall to the floor.

Taken while he was battling my foot (look at his claws).

I don't know what this string is but I'm pretty sure it doesn't go there.

I'm not that good a photographer; he seriously hung here for several seconds.

I think there's a balloon string or something out of frame.

I’ve also got this handful of photos of Twigs alone that are just too cool to resist including.

I love how he's posed like a lion in a tree out on the savannah.

Took me a minute to remember that this blanket has a hole in it.

And if you cannot get enough of Photos Of My Cat On The Internet, I have also advanced the sum total of human culture by putting some videos on YouTube. Alas I don’t have recordings of Styx’s other trademark qualities, like his habit of sitting on shoulders or his strange ritual of leaving my room to go out to the living room and meow sadly because no one is around.