An exercise in extreme patience and persistence: portrait photo of 8 dogs and 9 cats

The wrangling of cats for a photo is a challenge. Hell, the wrangling of a single cat for a decent photographic portrait can be a challenge. Kathy Smith, 30, had the patience of Job and the persistence of Ray Kroc, the MacDonalds owner (he said that persistence was a vital component of his success).

Portrait of 17 pets created single handedly by Kathy Smith. Well done indeed. Photo: Kathy Smith, agent: KENNEDY NEWS AND MEDIA

It has to be said that the dogs were more cooperative than the cats. That does not surprise me. Kathy spent a fortnight getting the photograph.

She lined up the dogs and then spent a lot of effort dashing between camera and the cats to get them to stay still for long enough and capture the split second moment.

You can bet that within 2 seconds of the photo being taken most of the cats jumped off the sofa.

It seems that she did all the wrangling herself. What you ideally need is one person on the camera and for this number of cats and dogs you need two people to wrangle the pets.

And you have no more than five minutes to get the job done before the cats and dogs have had enough and become terminally uncooperative.

My comments come on the back of first hand experience watching Helmi Flick taking photos of show cats at US cat shows. Husband Ken wrangles the cat or cats. When necessary the breeder, who is in attendance, also helps with wrangling.

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