ao2.it
Antonio Ospite, theorist attacks

In the attached picture you can see Betty Lou, the cat living in the garden here.

The original picture is named Ziggy Stardust by !!!!!!!!RUBYCIU!!!!!!!!!!! (in reference to David Bowie's heterochromia I guess). I just retouched it and made a National Geographic cover out of it, I just couldn't help it.

Betty Lou used to be a feral cat but she has slowly let herself be tamed, she started to show up in the garden at some point some years ago, just a few weeks after the previous “tenant” —named Strunzillo (see the note below)— passed away.

Capturing the trust of a feral cat can be a slow process, one interesting thing is that she only lets herself be touched when some conditions are met: known person (like one of the family) OR known place (like the garden, where she feels safe); if any of these is not met she still behaves like a feral cat WRT people contact.

Language note

Strunzillo in the Neapolitan language means literally “little piece of feces”, but the term can be used with some more generic connotations: it is clearly a disparaging way to address someone as non-important, useless; or it can also be used with a patronizing tone meaning “fool”, even with some sympathy in it.

Realization note

Attached there are the GIMP source files if you want to look at how I fixed the defects and how I composed the cover, and there is also a vectorial template for National Geographic covers, I couldn't find a high quality one on the Interwebs so I made one with Inkscape.

Attached files: 

Betty Lou photoretouched to fix some defects

Betty Lou NatGeo cover composition

National Geographic cover template