The Portland Pet Photographer Who Wets Dogs And Makes Them Shake It Off Has Finally Turned Her Attention To Cats

As far as I can tell, a large part of Carli Davidson’s Portland-based career so far has involved wetting cute animals.

Last year, those animals were tiny baby dogs; her coffee table book Shake Puppies — a follow-up from her 2013 debut in the genre, Shake Dogs — featured 120 beautiful action snaps of a variety of damp breeds, as they shook themselves dry.

This year, she is following it up in the only logical way: spraying water on a bunch of cats, and encouraging them to do the same.

Here is the trailer.

Yep.

In the book’s introduction, which her publisher was kind enough to let us excerpt, Davidson documents her long history with rescue cats.

“When I was a child, I walked into my local animal shelter and with all the self-assurance of a seven-year-old requested its largest cat,” she writes. “Hogan, as I liked to call him, wasn’t the sort of feline you would want to cross paths with in a dark alley. His face was covered with scars, and at twenty pounds he was all muscle. When I saw him in the shelter, I instantly fell in love with his boldness and independence. He casually walked up to me and smashed his head against my hand.”

Davidson’s love affair with rescue cats is represented in the spread on offer in the book; she worked with three Portland shelters to find her subjects, and most of the cats featured in the book were living in a shelter when she snapped them.

In addition, many are either diabetic or FIV+. “Both are conditions that some people think require a lot of money and time to take care of, so many of these cats don’t get adopted,” she writes. “What many people don’t know is that both of these health conditions are easily manageable.”

The photographer offered her portraits to the shelters to help encourage adoption, and will be donating a portion from her advance to the shelters which supported the project. In her introduction, she advocates for “indoor-only” cats: “As a strong supporter of conserving a safe environment for native species, I’ve let go of the idea that cats can be happy only with access to the outdoors. Instead, I’ve created an indoor environment that lets my cat hunt less established creatures, like catnip-filled bananas and neon-pink stuffed mice.”

Davidson also uses the occassion to draw attention to the importance of adopting, neutering, and spaying cats. According to figures she cites from the ASPCA, 1.4 million cats in America will be euthanised each year, and only 37% of cats in shelters are adopted, according to the 41% who are killed.

“By spaying and neutering your pet, or helping a friend in financial need get their own pet sterilized, you are preventing needless suffering and helping create more resources for the animals already in shelters,” she writes.

This publication has made no secret of its preference in the great canine vs feline war; we have an entire micro-site dedicated to the winner. But with Shake Cats, Carli is tipping the scales in favour of the underdog.

And her job continues to rule.

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Shake Cats by Carli Davidson is out now through HarperCollins.

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All images © Carli Davidson, from Shake Cats by Carli Davidson.