Pinning pictures

I have an email pen pal in Australia, and I was trying to go through photos last night to show him pictures of the people I'm talking about in emails to him. But the computer was slow and cranky and I gave up... not before noticing I took an astonishing number of photos of my cats over the years. Good for me.

It surprises me that Max and Bonnie really did look different when they were younger. They were more wide-eyed and didn't quite have the edge that they took on. They don't look quite like themselves, back ten or eleven years ago. If I may say so, I think Bonnie grew noticeably prettier, and Max took on a rugged, handsome air he didn't quite have at first. I wonder if I'll think the same of Ally and Seth someday.

Anyway, I mentioned here last week how I used to get into grudge matches with Bonnie over her ancient habit of peeing on my bed, and how after one bout, I went out and got her a silver and amber pendant as a gesture of apology and a reminder to myself whenever I looked at her from then on. I happened across photos of her from July, 2003 where it doesn't look like she has it, and then a handful from August 4 that seem to make a point, in some shots, of showing it. Thanks to those photos, I have a pretty good idea when I got it for her. I knew it was in the summer, and I knew it was on a weekend. August 4, 2003 was a Monday. So it's a good bet that I made that gesture August 2 or 3. Bonnie wore that pendant for the rest of her life, nearly ten more years. Right now it's on her last collar, sitting on the shelf by the ashes of Jody, Jenny, Twinkle, and Max, waiting for her return.

The one thing I can say about this photographic hobby and how I've held onto pretty much every photo I've taken since 2003 is that if I'm willing to put in the time to go look, I can usually use those photos to pin down dates and give a context to my life in the past 10 years or more that I would otherwise probably have lost to the murk of fallible memory.