Mia shot Solange in a rapid flurry of clicks that she later described as “the most photogenic animal I’ve ever worked with.”
Solange sat perfectly still through all of it, radiating the calm self-possession of a creature who understood that she was being observed and had decided to observe back—and if you looked at the resulting photos closely, you could almost convince yourself that the kitten was the one taking the portrait and the camera was just the medium she’d chosen toallow.
LeToya was a different story.
LeToya was the biter, and LeToya’s feelings about the photo shoot were communicated immediately and without ambiguity. When I placed her on the faux fur, she sank her teeth into the corner of the fabric and attempted to drag it under the couch.
“No,” I said, gently detaching her. “LeToya, dear, we’re taking photos. This is a professional engagement.”
LeToya bit my thumb.
“She has strong opinions,” Peter observed from a safe distance.
“She has strong teeth!” I placed her back on the fur.
She immediately attacked the feather toy that Mia had positioned as a prop, shredding it with a ferocity well beyond her threat level.
Mia, to her credit, kept shooting.
“This is content,” Mia said. “This is the kitten equivalent of an action movie poster.”
“She just decapitated a feather.”
“She’s edgy,” I said. “We discussed this.”
LeToya spent the next five minutes systematically destroying every prop we placed near her, while Mia documented the carnage with the gleeful focus of a combat photographer. The tiny bow tie lastedapproximately three seconds before LeToya ripped it off and batted it under the coffee table. The stuffed mouse lost an ear. The faux fur would never be the same.
“I think we have enough,” I said, nursing my thumb.
“I think we have a masterpiece,” Mia said. “Several, in fact.”
Peter picked up LeToya, who immediately went limp in his hands with the boneless surrender of a kitten who had spent all her combat energy and was now prepared to be held. He cradled her against his chest. She purred because that was the contradiction of LeToya. She would bite your hand and then fall asleep in it, and both acts were equally sincere.
Then came Beyoncé.
Oh, sweet Beyoncé.
“I have a plan,” I said. “We put her on the fur, we shoot fast, and we accept that whatever we get in the first ten seconds is what we’re working with because after ten seconds she will be somewhere else.”
“She’s already somewhere else,” Peter said.
He was right.
Beyoncé was not on the faux fur.
Beyoncé was not even in the living room.
Beyoncé was, based on the sound of tiny claws on porcelain, in the bathroom, doing something thatwould probably require an incident report and a plumber, possibly a mason with tools and lots of grout.
I went to the bathroom.
Beyoncé was on the toilet tank lid, standing on her hind legs, batting at the pull cord of the ventilation fan.
“No,” I said.
She looked at me.
Her expression communicated that she had heard my objection, processed it, and filed it in the same place she filed all human interference, which was nowhere.
