I came up with an idea one night.. how orange kitties get their color. It had to do with Cheetos. I thought to myself, that's a good idea, I need to write that down. And then I forgot completely. But I woke up with the idea I had an idea and tried to remember it. And then it came to me again.

My neighbor Cheryl has an orange kitty, Henry Grant, but he was a little too big. But not long ago, I photographed my neighbor Leslie's litter of kittens she was fostering. Each girl was different than the other -- black, gray with a cream paw, seal point, tortoiseshell and an orange tabby. And I thought, that little orange kitten would be the perfect size. I contacted Leslie but -- and I say this in kind of a humblebrag way -- because of my photos of her kittens, all had been adopted within a few days of the pictures being posted.

She got a hold of the owner, who had also adopted the little gray one with the cream paw, and she agreed to a photo shoot with the orange kitty, now named Charlie.

So I brought a black backdrop and bought a few bags of Cheetos... I prefer the fried ones but the puffy ones seemed the right ones... so I bought both kinds. My first thought was to photograph Charlie and turn a bunch of Charlies into tiny Cheetos. I thought that was a good idea. It wasn't. I cut the ends off both sides of a big bag of puffed Cheetos and we tried getting Charlie to come out of the bag. It worked to an extent but the one bag looked kinda lonely. So I added all of the bags and sprinkled some puffy Cheetos around. And darn it if that didn't make a good photo.

I present to you: How Orange Kitties Get Their Color.

Thanks, Charlie!