Why Cats Make Terrible Models

So, I have this cat. (I have two, actually, but let's stick with just this one.) Her name is Molly. Molly is... okay, I don't know if there's a feline equivalent of "functionally retarded," but pretend that there is. That's Molly.

Don't get me wrong: she is a sweetheart. She purrs a lot and likes to sit next to me on the couch when I watch football, and she likes to talk. Molly's pretty sassy. She's also dumber than a box of hair. She doesn't understand food as a concept, nor how to eat a treat out of her human's hand. When dinnertime rolls around, she doesn't realize that there is a plate of food and yes, it is in fact for her, unless you shove it in front of her face and slowly walk her plate across the kitchen and set it next to her water bowl. Walk too fast and you've lost her forever, but succeed and she'll sniff it, perhaps taste a bite or two, and then walk off while the other cat helps himself to her meal.

She also, bless her heart, has buck teeth. Honest-to-god fangs sticking out even when her mouth is closed. It's pretty adorable. So when the vet predicted that her current bout of gingivitis would eventually lead to her losing all her teeth, I set out to capture photographic evidence of her fangs before she lost them. This afternoon I found her lounging in a sunbeam, and thought it to be an opportune time. As it turns out, bright sunlight does not really cooperate with my camera.

 Not only did I fail in capturing the fangs on camera, but she looks a little bit like a James Bond villain here, or something from the scarier parts of Revelation.

 I also noticed one other thing that I failed to mention earlier: Molly is fat, which makes her reluctance to eat all the more amazing. Not pudgy or stocky the way certain breeds can look, but full-on Hindenburg levels of obese. When she trots, her belly swings back-and-forth like an overstuffed hammock in the breeze. When she backs up, she makes a beeping sound. She weighs nineteen pounds. Nineteen pounds.

So as I attempted with little success to photograph her fangs while thinking to myself, "Christ, she's huge," it occurred to me that perhaps I should focus on capturing her enormous girth instead.

And yeah, she looks pretty big there, but it's still not an accurate depiction of why she has her own gravitational field. The best I could do without purchasing a wide-angle lens was to stand in her sunbeam with my shadow ominously cast over her, making the picture of her, um, zaftig-ness even more disturbing.

Jenny Craig is coming from inside the house.

By this point Molly probably sensed I was making fun of her and left the sunbeam. I chased her around a little while longer, hoping I could finally commit those fangs to film. My most successful shot... look, she's special, okay?

That's my girl.