Fiocca (Snowflake)

My cat is 18 years old. She is more spirit now than she is cat. She was jet black as a kitten. I called her Fiocca because I wanted to smile when I said her name. Now she is more the color of a glass of Pinot sitting on a window sill. Today she doesn’t seem to weigh much more than when she was a kitten. She sleeps most of the time - getting up to move with the patches of sunlight she uses to soothe her arthritis. A cat that follows sunlight is a good role model for a photographer. Like many of us she once came under the influence of a woman who set the pattern of her desires. Now she interrupts many photoshoots, begging salmon of the models.

She has aged quite smoothly into her name. When she does move it’s like a snowflake. There is no entrance; she just materializes. One moment nothing - the next she is next to you, contemplating the the dancing Photshop brushes on the computer screen.

Once in Guanajuato, Mexico I photographed an old woman shielding her eyes from the sun. The skin of her hand was like rice paper and the light went right through it. One of the locals told me the woman was magical, a healer, a sorceress. He said that women like her didn’t die like the rest of us. Instead they gradually become weightless and more transparent until one day they are no longer there. I didn’t believe those things about the woman ..... but I do believe them about my cat.