Excerpt from "Bush Hogs and Other Swine"

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The Bloody Christmas Card Photo

 

            A few years ago, I told our friends from out of state that while I loved seeing the annual Christmas card picture of their children – and, indeed, I saved them in an album – I wanted to see the grownups, too. Unless they have a really good cosmetic surgeon, friends from 20 years ago have changed. And when your only contact with people is a card once a year, you have to glean clues about their lives from the family photo.

            “Cousin Roy must be doing well. It looks like the picture was taken in Mexico – unless that’s a backdrop at the J. C. Penney studio. And look, he’s gotten a new wife. I wonder what happened to Gladys?”

            One reason people tend to use a picture of the children is that it is hard to get the whole family together, hair combed, shirts buttoned, eyes open and mouths shut. Getting a family picture should not be as hard as it is. In fact, it would be a snap if everyone would just cooperate, but nooooo. 

            Some person complains that he’s too busy replacing the belt on the lawn mower. Then other persons take their cue from Dad and sulk around, refusing to change clothes and making grimaces at the camera. Meanwhile, the Fun Director chirps cheerfully at the children and makes veiled threats through her teeth to the dad.

            Having told our friends how to do their Christmas cards, I felt the bar was raised for our own card. It was my thought that, since we have only one child, we should include our pets to fill up all the empty space around the people. Our daughter, Katie Bo, received this news with the same enthusiasm that children everywhere exhibit at the prospect of posing on command. My husband, Cricket, thought I was insane.

            At the time, our pets numbered 11, more than half of which were cats. It would be a challenge, I knew, but since one of the cats was leash-broke, I thought we could pull it off.

We’ve done the photo with all the animals five or six times, and the results have been mixed. (“Mixed with blood,” Cricket mutters.)

            Arranging the animals is always a challenge. Beyond the mere idea of getting six cats, two dogs and three horses within 100 yards of each other, you have to take into account the relative size of the subjects. Cats are tiny next to horses. We learned that the first year when we had cats on leashes at our feet and horses leaning over the fence behind us. You could see the horses real well, but we had to put arrows on the photo to point out the cats. 

            The next year we tried holding the cats up in the air next to the horses’ faces. That led to a lot of blood spilled without accomplishing the objective, because the dog was left on the ground alone. So the next year we put the dog on a table with a tablecloth. Then it looked like we were having a used pet sale.

            Another problem we found the first year was that Cricket is not a good cat-holder. He holds a cat like it was a football, and we have only one cat who tolerates that. But even Kramer could tolerate only so much, and he began pulling himself onto Cricket’s shoulder with his claws. Whereupon Cricket dropped the cat, who ran down in the woods. So we had to lock the rest of the cats in nearby cars, crates, the barn, etc., while I went down in the woods to retrieve Kramer.

            For the next take, we had Cricket hold Carmen, who is like a stuffed animal who happens to be alive. As it turned out, there were limits to Carmen’s good nature, too. After fetching Carmen from down in the woods, I suggested Cricket hold the horses and Katie Bo and I would handle the cats. Cricket got the horses lined up, Katie Bo had one cat in her arms and one on a leash, we had two in a crate and I had two in my arms. 

            All we had to do was get the dogs to join us. We called them and threw dog biscuits at the designated spot. Dixie Belle posed obligingly but Whiskey was afraid of the horses. So we ended up with three people, six cats, three horses and a dog huddled together in the driveway and then a lot of empty space off to the left with a dog lying there by herself.

            Having run through several photographers over the years, last year I just made up a card with a separate shot of each member of the family. This year, feeling ambitious again, I am working on presenting the animals by species: one shot of the horses, one of the dog, one of the people. As usual, the cats provide the challenge. 

            But I have found that with a fast enough shutter speed and enough little crystal bowls of poached hummingbird tongues, you can get a herd of cats to suspend hostilities and smile for the birdie – for 1/500 of a second.

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Copyright Robin Traywick Williams

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