This couple's hilarious 'birthing' photo shoot might make you doubt cat owners' sanity
Cat lover and photographer Lucy Schultz has spent the majority of her life fostering kittens and volunteering at her local shelter. Despite her life-long passion for the furry animals, she didn’t have one to call her own since she was a little girl.
It was after her and her partner of three years, Steven, were in a financially stable situation that they decided to bring a new addition to their family. After searching for months for “the one,” Schultz found a 5-month-old orange and white male at SoulDog Rescue in Colorado. The kitten stole their heart with its cuteness.
To celebrate the adoption milestone Schultz contacted her best friend, Elizabeth Woods-Darby, a professional videographer. Schultz and Woods-Darby got to together to bounce around ideas, they wanted to do something creative and funny that would bring joy to their family and friends.
“A year ago, I was so excited for the day I’d get to have my own cat that I told my friend Elizabeth I was thinking of doing a baby/kitten announcement after I adopted,” Schultz tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “She was equally pumped about the idea and immediately jumped on board with her own ideas, and it just snowballed from there, as things do when you’re with your BFF. We looked at some birth photos together and said yeah, let’s take it to the next level.”
Steven was on board as well. “He’s the best man I’ve ever met, and he completely embraces my weirdness and my obsession with cats. I’m a lucky woman,” says Schultz.
And the result was definitely next level. The images quickly went viral, and they gathered over 55,000 shares and 20,000 likes. She captioned the milestone photo shoot: “On 1/10/18 we welcome our first baby kitten, a neutered male DLH. He is 22″ long and weighed 6 pounds 7 oz. He is already eating solid food. Name to be announced. We are so in love.”
Woods-Darby tells Yahoo Lifestyle they are overwhelmed with the positive response and the attention their project has gotten.
“We wanted the images to feel as real life as possible. The unmade bed, the messy sweaty face and hair, the natural light and the sweetness of the new 5-month-old kitten with his new parents,” Woods-Darby says about the inspiration for the photos. “The hilarity did not escape us. But we charged on through our laughter. And yes, we laughed the whole shoot. But Lucy and her partner were troopers and we managed to capture some incredibly heartfelt images as well. It was one of the funnest shoots I’ve done in a while.”
Despite a very limited number of naysayers, Schultz says there was a lot more love and positivity than anything else, and she is “so grateful to everyone who laughed or said, ‘this is so us.’”
Although the orange kitten has yet to receive a name, he is already learning his new home and its rules.
“We are just teaching the little guy about boundaries and fish tanks since we have two tanks in the house that he’s very curious about. He just wants to touch the fish, or give them a hug, and maybe taste them,” Schultz says jokingly.
She adds: “He goes to sleep on his baby blanket every night and he has no idea he’s famous.”
Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:
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