This week I thought that rather than a single animated GIF of all photos like last week, I’d do separate GIFs of interesting events. Though I must confess, I got a bit carried away playing with this new toy… I ended up capturing 337 photos, and made 14 GIFs. But don’t worry, I won’t be posting all of those. I’m sure I’ll scale that back for next time, but enjoy it this week.

So today I’ll share a few still photos, plus a bunch of animated editions.  I’ll indicate which are GIFs, so if you have a slow connection, you’ll know which are still loading their animations.

Let’s start with some still pictures; Porcini jumping onto awning:

Porcini, twin, Paladout:

A long-distance photo of a twin inside the house, Pumpkin rolling around on the deck:

Here’s a closer view of the oh-so-dainty Pumpkin:

And now an animated GIF that includes those shots and more, showing the cats out front, and Pumpkin arriving and rolling around on the deck. This GIF is at one frame per second, since there are multiple camera angles; I also made the GIF at 2 FPS, but that was harder to follow, so I won’t include it:

Bella tracking something in the breezeway, watched by Poppy; probably a moth or bat:

A GIF edition, with the arrival of Pumpkin:

Pumpkin near the bird feeders while I was refilling them (that metal plate is the inspection hatch on our septic tank):

A brief GIF of various Pumpkin pics from Sunday:

Porcini in front of the cat house:

GIF of Poppy and Bella snuggling in the breezeway cabin:

A GIF of Pumpkin arriving at the feeder when it dispenses some food every 15 minutes in the morning:

A twin under the awning on our main deck, sheltering amongst the tarp-covered stacked furniture:

Poppy face:

Snuggles:

Another breezeway GIF:

GIF of Pumpkin and a twin at the cabin:

Another day, another breakfast GIF, this time with several ferals getting some food… until Pumpkin arrives:

I so enjoy the snuggles:

Twin pose:

Here’s a longer GIF featuring Pumpkin rolling around on the deck, plus another couple of cats nearby:

Making GIFs like this is a fairly laborious process; this one involved capturing 106 stills, which have their dates assigned and watermark applied by the excellent Retrobatch utility, then they are resized and stitched together as a GIF by another Retrobatch workflow.

A much easier way to capture GIFs is using a recent purchase: the Camect cam server. It is a hardware box that wirelessly connects to the cameras (I have it connecting to nine of my cams) and records their footage on an internal hard disk. It also lets me watch all nine of the connected cameras at once in a window on my old iMac, live and recorded footage, even syncing all cameras to the same timestamp.

Anyway, one of its many features is the ability to save recaps of a time range as movies or GIFs. Here’s an example, using a similar time range to the above one:

It doesn’t give me as fine a control of the particular frames, and the frame rate, but it only takes a few clicks.

Cats on the awning:

A GIF of a twin arriving to sniff at Pumpkin, and retreating. Perhaps wondering if he’s still alive? (Wait for the delayed reaction, too.) I’m actually including two editions of the same sequence; here’s it at 1 frame per second (real time):

And the GIF again at 2 FPS (double-time):

Which do you prefer? For a single camera angle like this, I think 2 FPS works better.

Finally, a twin in front of the cat house:

I hope you enjoyed this experiment with GIFs. Let me know in the comments!

This week, something different: all of the pictures!  No, don’t run away, it’s not that bad.  I had 129 pictures to choose from this week, with too many good ones… so I thought I’d create an animated GIF of all of them. Having done that, I was able to filter them down to 20 to post as pictures, skipping many that I would otherwise have wanted to include.

Check out the GIF below to see the others, but first, the static pictures.

Starting with a super graceful Pumpkin soaking up the rays; nobody can relax like him (and another position in the GIF):

Bella in the breezeway cabin, visited by Porcini:

Porcini staring at something, Poppy on the back door step, and someone else eating inside:

I rearranged Pansy’s nest in the back of the shop, and moved the cam over there so I could see her. She likes to hang out on the chairs:

And has a hollowed out cushion to sleep in:

There’s a heating pad on the old dog bed in the foreground, but I haven’t seen her use it. I might try putting it under her cushion. It doesn’t get quite as cold in the back of the shop, though, as the walls are somewhat insulated (but also has non-insulated portions), and there’s a wall heater that comes on when it’s really cold.

Bella has been using the new breezeway cabin pretty much every night:

Pumpkin peeking at me while I refill the bird feeders. He is there most mornings, and has stopped running away when I approach; he knows I’m not a threat:

I moved the mobile cam a bit closer to the cat house, which gives a nice view of it and the area in front. Here’s Paladout approaching:

And Pumpkin:

Pumpkin again, watching me walking past from under the cedar:

Three cats:

Pumpkin arrived while two others (Poppy and Porcini, I believe) were eating. They each looked up at him, then kept on eating. Oh, it’s you:

Poppy slept in the breezeway cabin for a couple of hours, too:

Unfortunately, Pumpkin found the new cabin… and sprayed it to claim it as his. He just has to have all the shelters:

Pumpkin and a twin facing off:

Pumpkin slowly edged around to get to the feeder, then decided to wander off instead:

Pumpkin didn’t put off the others from the breezeway, though.  Later, Poppy was in the cabin again, and Porcini was wanting to join her, when Jenn approached to get in the car, which is parked at the end of the breezeway. So they both ran away:

A cat on top of the house, another inside, as a third approaches:

Two cats on the roof, one on the deck. The flat tops of the facade makes great perches for cats:

It’s showtime! See more pictures related to the above ones, and others that I didn’t include, in this animated GIF of 129 captured cat pictures from this week (about a minute in duration at two frames per second; it might take a moment to load if you have a slow connection):

Please let me know in the comments if you enjoyed this; I could easily do it in the future, thanks to a Retrobatch workflow that takes a collection of photos, resizes them, and converts them to a GIF.