Well, this is a rather purist post in terms of the photographic character... For a long time I wanted to make a post only with pictures of my stray cats... I say "my stray cats" because they are in "my streets" which are those of my town, where I grew up and where I have always lived...

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I grew up only having dogs and only about six years ago I started having cats.... One day someone abandoned a pair of newborn kittens outside our garage door and my wife and I decided to raise them, it took a lot of work, but they both survived and are home with us. In fact, we now have 7 cats and have rescued and found adoptive homes for another 21... Such was the love we developed for these animals.

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These are pictures of stray kittens, not of my cats at home. In reality they are usually cats with a home but which usually roam the streets and the houses of the neighbourhoods at leisure... Is very difficult for cats to be totally homeless here in my town, as they are animals wich easily make friends with people and make very few nuisances. They are also useful for keeping vermin populations under control and, best of all, if you feel sad you can play with them or even cuddle them... Cats are "100% therapeutic" and I am sure they are useful to relieve almost any physical and spiritual pain...

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Ok, in the previous paragraph I've already started to sound like some kind of "cat priest" so I guess it's not worth keeping up appearances anymore... So I'll tell you something, I have a saying which goes "Life is a cat" and I use it when things don't seem to be going well... I also recommend to anyone who doesn't have a cat yet, to look for one and adopt it, because that's one of the most delightful experiences I know so far... There is "a something" about cats, that makes them seem like some kind of "guru" acting just to give us an example and tell us how to deal with everyday challenges (ok, I'd better stop writing, maybe I'm already sounding too weird)... :)

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SEE THESE PHOTOS IN VINTAGE B&W VERSIONS

Monochrome photography acolytes (like me for example) tend to say crazy things like "The soul of a photo is revealed when the colours are removed"... Well, this sounds a bit extreme, but there is some truth in it, because in black and white photographs tend to generate a more complex psychic impact in general. But preferences aside, I'll leave it up to you to judge or appreciate the way you like today's photos best. So here are the vintage black and white versions, which I achieve by adding transparent layers with yellow to the traditionally desaturated images and also by making adjustments to shadows, highlights and levels.

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Well, I'm glad I was able to do this post, I did it late Saturday afternoon due to being busy doing other things earlier, but I finished on time and I can tell you: "Happy #caturday to all of you at #hive! :)

ADDITIONAL TECHNICAL NOTE: Photographs captured with my Nikon D7000 DSLR camera in RAW format, then processed in Adobe Camera RAW for adjustments regarding light, sharpening, contrast and depth... The shots are then exported to JGP format on which minor modifications such as straightening and adding watermarks were carried out using PhotoScape 3.6.3.

Thank you very much for your visit and appreciation!