Blogging With Cats – Part 1 of ?

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An orange tabby cat leans in from the left to sniff two jars of homemade chili crisp on a tray, on a wooden dining table.
Finn, arriving low and slow to inspect the chili crisp.

Welcome to what I strongly suspect is going to be a very long-running series.

Here’s a truth about food blogging in a house with two cats: you’re not photographing your food. You’re photographing your food with feline editorial oversight, whether you asked for it or not. I did not ask for it. It doesn’t matter. I have it anyway.

Exhibit A: the chili crisp I made this week. I set the jars on the tray by the window, got my light dialed in, and before I could take a single clean frame, Finn arrived.

The Orange Boy investigates

Finn was curious about the chili crisp. Reasonably so; it smells incredible. He came in low and slow, the way he does when he’s decided something on the counter is his business now.

He sniffed. I clicked. Fine, one for the bloopers folder.

Then he left, and I thought that was that. It wasn’t that. He came back. Twice. The second time he got right up on the jar, whiskers out, giving it the full inspection, like a health inspector who’s heard rumors.

An orange tabby cat's whiskered face enters the frame right beside a jar of chili crisp, giving it a close inspection.
The full whisker inspection, like a health inspector who’s heard rumors.

And then, because he’s Finn, he stuck his entire face directly into my lens. You’ve never seen a blurrier orange nose. It’s genuinely one of my favorite frames of the whole shoot, and it’s completely unusable, and those two things aren’t in conflict.

An out-of-focus orange cat nose fills the foreground, blurring a shot of chili crisp jars behind it.
The blurriest orange nose you’ve ever seen. Unusable, and a favorite.

For the grand finale, while I was actually trying to get my hero shot (the clean one, the money shot, the one that took me twenty minutes to light), he strolled behind the jars and made absolutely certain his tail was entirely, gloriously visible. Photobomb by tail. A signature move.

An orange cat's tail curls into the frame behind two jars of chili crisp, photobombing the hero shot.
The grand finale: photobomb by tail.

The QC department

This isn’t a Finn-only situation. This is a two-cat operation.

Finn and Callie consider themselves Quality Control for anything that happens in the kitchen or the dining room. Callie (my Garden Manager by day) moonlights as kitchen supervisor; Finn handles hands-on product inspection. Between them, nothing gets cooked, styled, or photographed in this house without at least one set of whiskers signing off on it.

And then there’s Remy, my sweet pit bull, who wants no part of management. Remy lies at my feet and hopes, with his whole heart, that I’ll drop something edible. That’s the difference between the dog and the cats in one sentence: the dog is waiting for a handout, and the cats are convinced they own the place. (The cats aren’t entirely wrong.)

Yes, the cats are on the table

I know. I can already hear it. There are people who’ll be scandalized that I let my cats up on the dining table, let alone that I let them get their noses near food I’m about to photograph and, presumably, eat.

Here’s my honest answer: deal with it. This is our home, these are our cats, and this is how we live in it. I wash my surfaces, I’m not serving you off Finn’s whisker, and the odds that a little orange cat has ruined anything are considerably lower than the internet would have you believe.

So, gently but firmly: this is a cat-friendly blog. If you came here to be charmed by a food blog that happens to include animals, welcome, pull up a chair, you’re going to have a great time. If you came here to leave a mean comment about my cats, don’t. I’ll delete it, and I won’t feel a thing. Life’s too short and my cats are too good.

That’s part one. Given that I live with two professional supervisors and photograph food for a living, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for part two.

P.S. Finn has no memory of any of this and would do all of it again tomorrow. He regrets nothing. He’s incapable of regret. It’s one of his best qualities.

P.P.S. Callie wasn’t in these particular photos, which she’d want you to know is a scheduling choice on her part and not a lack of interest. Her supervision is simply more managerial. She delegates the sniffing.

P.P.P.S. Remy did eventually get a little piece of something he shouldn’t have. Don’t tell the vet.