I put some batteries in our wildlife camera the other day, and tinkered with it to see if it was actually working (doubts existed in my mind for some reason). I couldn’t get it to test at all, and feared the worst. Even so, I placed it in the downstairs room and left it there to see what would happen.
It did work, and although my placement was arbitrary and far-from-ideal, the camera chronologued the actions of our cats as they visited the french door for a bit of wildlife appreciation.
Here’s a sample photo (click to enlarge):
That’s about as dynamic as they get. Daisy can be seen looking out of the window, and Stropping is approaching from stage right. This photo is a daylight shot (no flash), but nighttime shots were far, far more common. Like this one:
Or this one:
Similar aren’t they? Well the truth is terrible indeed. The camera functioned (based on the timestamps on the photos) for a little over 4 days, and took 285 photos in total. About 260 of those photos showed Emi, either heading toward or away from the window. Here is an example, consecutive pair:
If the above is typical (and it seemed to be), Emi made over 100 trips to the french doors, averaging about 15 minutes a time. That’s 25 hours in total, or about a quarter of her life during the time the camera was functioning 🙂
I’m not kidding either. Of the 285 shots only about 10 had Daisy in them, including this stunningly disturbing image…
And only one single shot had Yossie in it!
And she is the cat who used to live for looking out those doors!
I’ll leave with one of the atypical Emi images. Taken at night, this shows that Emi does indeed have a secret life of her own 🙂
