Pet profile pages are winning the Internet, their antics and attitude earning them a steady fan following, thanks to their social media managers... oops, owners! We have picked a few of those engaging pets and got to interact with thier beloved owners.
Has social media gone to the dogs (and cats)? One glance at some homegrown pet profile pages might make you think so. Pets around the world have had their dedicated fan pages for a while, but these days, our desi furry creatures too appear to be earning their own set of devotees online. Urban pet parents around have been getting creative to build an online persona for their four-legged family member.
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One question, however, always baffles us — how does one manage to get such clear, unblurred captures and guffaw inducing videos, given how frisky and restless these animals tend to be. We get you the behind-the-scenes from some of the most popular pet profiles we stumbled upon during our social media-hunting spree.
Chingri
What started as an amateur experiment with a cat and the phone camera developed into a page with a follower count of over 1,700. It has been two years since Chingri signed up on Facebook. The page is run by photographer Chirodeep Chaudhuri and his wife Rohini Bhowmick, but more so by the latter, as Chiro insists. What sets this cat page a cut above the rest, is the stellar photography, with some rather luxurious close-up shots where Chingri gazes straight into the camera, the lighting is perfect and the fur looks pristine. A conscious call for discipline to create a proper collection of the photos led to the making of the page.
Pic/Chirodeep Chaudhuri
It is Rohini's extreme comfort level with Chingri that helps her capture the many moods of their pet, says Chirodeep
Pics/Rohini Bhowmick
"The shots were so good, I didn't want to run the risk of them getting lost. You know how careless we are with our phones," says Chirodeep. He continues, "For someone who is not a photographer, to achieve this kind of perfection, speaks a lot about the bond that Rohini shares with Chingri. This is not wildlife photography of course, but it is based on the same principle of behaviour. Chingri is so comfortable around her, that even when she goes too close to her with the phone, she doesn't get flustered," Chiro says. The photos have now found hardcover permanence in The Book of Chingri.
Nemo Bandy, The Beagle
Nemo has been a member of the Bandiwadekar household for two years now. His Insta handle nemobandy_beagle, run by Navjyot and his sister Neha and has a follower count of over two thousand, which could well beat the sibling duo's combined friend-list. When they brought Nemo home two years ago on their mother's birthday, Navjyot had uploaded a couple of photos on his own profile. "When I used those hashtags, I realised that pet profile pages are a huge deal worldwide, so I thought why not make one for Nemo.
2k followers. woof woof. Thank you my Pawsome friends!
I still don't like #MumbaiRains since pooping outside becomes a problem.
Navjyot Bandiwadekar with Nemo
Initially, some of the photos got reposted by famous international beagle handles, which I think added to its popularity. Also, pet profiles are only catching up here now. Two years ago, I guess, there was not much competition from the home front," he says, explaining Nemo's follower count. Capturing a hyperactive beagle is never easy. So what's the trick, we ask? "We try to distract him, or talk to him, so he doesn't get too focused on the camera, and then he gives us a look and we are like boom, there's our shot." As regards Nemo's voice, Navjyot adds, "That's the filmmaker side of me using my imagination."
Miz Nina, The Criminal Cat
"The glares you see Miz Nina wearing on her profile picture belong to my dad, she stole them from him," says Uma Asher, who created this catty page on Facebook about two years ago. It was when her friends started to notice how she "would be uploading too many cat photos" on her own profile, that she thought of making a separate Facebook page altogether for Nina. "They were right, I was getting a bit carried away with my cat posts," Uma recalls. All posts on Miz Nina's page are in first person where she describes her own "life and crimes", that involves endless hours of rumination by the window or breaking into a drawer and other aftermaths of cat crimes.
One of the highest viewed videos on the page is that of Nina trying to open the door of a book shelf. "The peculiar perseverance she displays, is very typical of her and makes some of the shots rather amusing. Once you spend a lot of time with a pet, you see the moments coming, and you are ready with your phone. Some of it is also attention seeking behaviour. She's very social, spitfire and feisty, extremely un-cat like," says Uma, a digital media professional.
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