Turkey’s Story
Everything I make begins with intention. I want it to tell a story, to resonate. That’s the intention behind this collection.
All ten of these photos were taken in the span of our cat Turkey’s life. And when I was putting them together, they shaped themselves into the story of a life — not just his, but life itself. They move through the same arc we all do: the beginning, the wide-eyed childhood years, the rush of midlife, the quieter twilight, and finally, the end.
This new photo collection is an example of that. Ten frames, taken across the span of a single season of life, pieced together into a story about a black-and-white cat named Turkey — and about everything that happened in the time he was here.
Photo 1: Christmas Turkey
It starts at the beginning, with Turkey as a kitten. Small, black and white, crouched beside a coil of Christmas lights. We had just brought him home, and everything about him was new, his eyes cautious and curious, his little frame lit up by the glow of bulbs waiting to be strung.
Photo 2: First Light
From there, the world opens. Sunlight breaks through the trees, streaking across the frame with power lines cutting through. It’s the first light of a day, the first breath of something beginning, the reminder that life has its own pulse whether you’re watching it or not.
Photo 3: Childhood
My son climbing a sandy path in my orange rain jacket, swallowed up in the protection of his father, bare feet pressing into the ground. It’s the image of childhood, that mixture of smallness and courage, where every step feels like a discovery.
Photo 4: The Wonder Years
The globe with the moon behind it follows — playful, almost whimsical. A reminder of how we all first learn our place in the world through imagination, through symbols and songs, before reality has the weight it later gathers.
Photo 5: Perpetual Motion
And then, the rush. A ferry slides between skyscrapers just before dawn, the city lit and alive, people moving in every direction. This is midlife — the endless press of days and work and motion, the current carrying you forward whether you want to move or not. Life outside the walls.
Photo 6: Twilight
But life doesn’t stay in that current forever. A crescent moon over treetops, sky fading into warm dusk, marks the twilight. The last breaths of summer. A moment where the air feels still, and you know change is on its way.
Photo 7: Winter Sky
Then winter arrives. Branches lined with snow against the dark sky, beauty that feels sharp at the edges, both breathtaking and a little lonely.
Photo 8: Insomnia
And then the frame narrows again to Turkey himself — crouched under a car at night, a streak of light bending across the distance. He looks so small against all the darkness, so vulnerable against a world that can be disorienting, indifferent, and far too big.
Photo 9: Foggy days
A foggy streetlamp glows in the next image, a crow caught mid-flight across the frame. It feels like an omen, the kind of sign you notice only after the fact, when the shape of the story is clear, and you can see the ending.
Photo 10: Flowers
And finally, the last photograph:
Turkey had gotten out one night and wandered about a hundred feet from our house, over some fences, all the way to the highway. Someone posted on the neighborhood Facebook page that a black-and-white cat had been hit, and Chas texted me. I went out to the road, driving slow, scanning both sides. It wasn’t long before I saw him — a small black-and-white figure lying under a tree at the edge of the highway.
I pulled over about twenty-five yards past, parked, and walked back. I already knew. I scooped him up. He was limp and heavy in my arms — already such a big boy. I carried him to the car, set him gently in the trunk, and drove him home.
There wasn’t much blood, nothing violent to look at. I laid him on a drop cloth in the garage, then went to get a shovel. Out back, in the flower garden — the place that’s become a kind of family pet cemetery — I began to dig. Two birds are buried there, and a grasshopper, a newt, a salamander, a frog. Turkey went there too early.
When the hole was ready, I went back for him. I placed him down in the grave I had dug. Then I walked to the side of the house, picked a few flowers, and brought them back to lay across his body. I don’t know why I did that. I just always do — make a little arrangement for any animal I bury. I think it’s just the same reason people have been doing it for thousands of years: because flowers are a way of expressing what words cant.
I stood there a while, just being with him. Fifteen minutes, maybe more. Watching the breeze move the shadows of branches across the ground. Listening to the leaves rustle. Letting the memories play in my head, thinking about how much I loved him.
And then — scoop by scoop — I buried him in our flower garden.
This collection isn’t about perfect technique or polished images. It’s about what was happening in between. What’s always happening in between and in the background of the big moments. From the first time I saw him to the last time I did, these are the days of Turkey’s life. These ten frames are a reminder that every life, no matter how small, leaves a story behind.
