ZUINA (which means ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful’ in Moroccan Arabic)

Like many pet owners, I was in denial about my own cat’s mortality. She’d been healthy her whole life, ever since I found her as a starving street kitten in Morocco 11 years ago, so I rationalized that there was no rush to get her photos done because she was so healthy. But when she suddenly became ill recently, all that imagined time just evaporated in a flash. I suddenly realized that, even though I was now a professional pet photographer, I had little more than cell phone photos of my own cat and I experienced a deep sense of regret.

I was fortunate to be given a second chance though. After her second blood transfusion, there was a brief window where she was feeling better and started acting like her old self again. I took the opportunity to get her into my tiny studio for a quick 10min photo shoot. Even as she deteriorated again I felt some sense of solace from having captured the kinds of images that illustrated the different sides of her personality and that I could treasure after her passing.

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