Flower shop cat, on the surface, is a simple scene. It’s a cat, a ledge, a papered window, a brick wall, and a plant.
That’s the extent of the scene.
But the details. It’s the details that bring the complexity and the energy.
It’s in her fur, in her paw stretching to push the plant. It’s her tongue caught mid-lick. It’s the complexity of a plant left to grow the way it wants when it wants. It’s the weathered brick and metal of the ledge. It’s the paper fading and torn and showing it’s lived in the world.
Flower shop cat is a study in the complexity of the simple scene, one I could have passed by in any day. Complexity in the details, in the small elements that make it interesting to watch and live and learn.
So I won’t rush the complexity. I might have sketched the details quickly, captured the scene in a fraction of a second but the energy that goes into making you feel the feeling this evokes in me, that takes time and detail. I like that.
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I was on a mission. I was dead eye stare straight ahead - my New York City walk.
Maybe it was the wet earth smell instead of the urine and trash. Maybe it was because the sidewalk turned into a cave with plants and flowers and vines and things crowding in from all sides, dark and calm.
She was in the sun, almost blending into the window sill she sat on. My first photos of her were after I walked past, after I walked by and something in my brain banged on my eyes and ears and head and heart and all the places and told me to stop, there’s something to see here. Stop, there’s something to see here! Stop, look around!
So I turned back and saw her there. I was that person on the New York City sidewalk that stopped and blocked the flow of people around me. Like a stone that got wedged into the creek and nearly dammed up the surrounding area.
I watched her take a quick bath, turn and get herself stretched out for another nap. It was the paw, her front paw, stretching towards the back of the pot of flowers that made me move. Made me see more than I first saw, made me move to get a better angle. I was watching her and pushing the button on my phone to take the pictures. Not realizing what I captured until much later. The attitude, the will she or won’t she push that plant off the ledge vibe. I stopped because something told me to stop and look and listen. Maybe not listen but definitely stop and look.
Flower shop cat is doing the work of the shop. She sees a plant, forgotten and missed by the hundreds or thousands of people who walk by each day. One moment, one day, she knows someone is watching. She’s doing the work of bringing attention to a forgotten plant on the window sill of a store – somewhere caught in the no mans’ land between places.
