I suppose that it's only fair to start at the very beginning so you might truly come to understand my lunacy:)

I have always loved and enjoyed working with animals, whether it be horses, canines, or felines, domestic or otherwise. But my cat-fanaticism all started in 1982 when I saw a film about cougars, namely, about a young kitten who got separated from his mother, and had to learn how to survive on his own. I'd love to get a hold of that film today, but I can't begin to remember the title. It was a 16mm film even ( I think I just totally dated myself). I was mesmerized by the sheer beauty of the cat on the screen, and it started me on a life-long journey of discovery and learning.

In the summer of 1984, some friends of a friend had a "pet" cougar that they had "acquired". They were moving cross-country, and needed to give the little cougar a new home. My friend knew that I liked cats, especially cougars, and so quite literally, I had said cougar dropped into my lap. Shasta and I were fast friends the moment we met!

Shasta, who was better known by most as ShastaCat, which was a shortened version of "ShastaNeonHyperSpastiKitty". He was the cougar ADHD poster child! He altered the very course of my life, which is probably more accurately stated as, tilted the axis of my world, as in, upside-down. But oh what a grand adventure! My dissertation (for my PhD in Counseling) ended up being about him, where I tried to capture so very much of that portion of my life. So today, I use his name to honor those times.

I was young and naive then. I've always had a semi-eidetic memory, and so never felt it necessary to take pictures of things. I know better now. It's not about memory. It's about capturing those tiny moments in time forever, and being able to share them with everyone else. Sure, the memories for me are the same, and I hope always will be, but unfortunately, I can’t just plug someone else into my head and do a brain-dump for them.

I told myself after the conclusion of the Shasta-Adventure, that I would "do it better" next time, as in take all the pictures and video that I could. I have made good on that promise. Today, I have about 50,000 pictures, and hours and hours and hours of video!

I had always thought that I didn't have a single picture of Shasta. It wasn't until I was digging through a junk drawer that I found a whole box of undeveloped film. I took every last one of them to the 1-hour place and had them developed. Out of the fourteen rolls, one was slides, and they were all fine, two were blank because of age, so I'll never know what moments they might have held, but the other eleven were mostly color-faded, but still viewable. Much to my joy and elation, there was a single picture of Shasta on one of the rolls! So this picture, is that one I found, almost 20-years after-the-fact.

This picture was taken in the summer of '85. It was taken with a Canon A1 on Kodak ISO 400 film. I don't know what lens I had then. The negative was totally color-shot and was this horrible, purple color, so here, the image has been shunted to monochrome and scaled down to be space-conscious.

So this is my beloved ShastaNeonHyperSpastiKitty. He was my first housecat. And yes, I mean that literally.

No wonder I've got such a warped perspective of things, huh? Of course, I had help. His name was "Shasta".

Disclaimer: I hate to have to put this on here, but the pic is copyright me. Please do not distribute, copy, alter, etc, without my permission. Having said all that, feel free to download and use it for your own inspiration.