Having battled many times with my dog to get the perfect selfie, this feat is particularly whopping to behold: 17 pets sitting still for one photo.
Pet-owners have all been there. You look down and see your trusty dog or cat doing something adorable, you hunch down to take a picture, and they scutter away in an instant.
It turns out we’re all mere rookies in the pet-snapping game: Kathy Smith is the champ.
At her semi-detached home in Corwen, Wales, Kathy has eight dogs – Ruby, Ben, Max, Sheba, Teddy, Rio, Storm and Mishka – and nine cats, alongside four budgies, several fish and a baby hedgehog in her care.
Kathy said:
People are usually shocked when they come over and realise how many pets we have, the house is mad but we’re used to it. They all run around and you don’t realise there’s a lot of them until they’re in one room.
One day, Kathy – who rescues and cares for pets and other wildlife in need – summoned the gusto to try and get the ultimate photo of her numerous pets.
After taking a few warm-up photos, the pet-owner quickly realised something: the dogs were actually quite easy, but the cats were going to be the tricky bit.
The shop assistant first called in her eight pups and told them to ‘sit’ while holding treats. After herding the cats over, Kathy dashed back and forth with her camera on standby and was forced to haul them back into place three times. Then, for a split second, she got the shot.
You check out the amazing snap below:
Kathy added:
I was so thrilled when I realised I’d captured this shot – it’s like a little family photo. I love all of my pets so much so I was really happy when I managed to get them all posing together – despite it not being easy to do.
I kept trying to get photos of the cats and dogs all together but some of them were always out of frame. The dogs will all sit for treats so that was easy enough, but the cats were another matter. I now know the real meaning behind herding cats – I had to just keep picking them up and putting them back until they stayed.
It took about three attempts but in the end I managed to keep them there for a couple of seconds and get the photo before they were off again.
As for co-existing alongside so many pooches and cats, Kathy said: ‘We live in quite a chaotic house but you get used to it.’
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.