AccuKitten, Painted

Oct 16, 2011; 8:49 AM ET

With 4 and a half stars, this photo of snow falling on a kitten has been in the #1 or #2 spot as rated by AccuWeather.com Photo Gallery visitors since shortly after it was uploaded on November 7, 2007 by Local storm chaser Ron “R-Factor” Shawley.

The photo is famous enough that it even holds the #2 spot on a Google image search for “kitten snow” and has been stolen and added to web pages hundreds of times.

Recently, an artist in Virginia found the photo, painted it, and sent a copy to AccuWeather HQ for display. Here is a scan of that beautiful oil painting:

The note card that came with “Kitten’s First Snow” and the certificate of authenticity we received said:

“Reproduction of an original oil painting by Donna DeMoranville Turgeon (COASTAL REFLECTIONS: Fine art, limited edition prints, and notecards). My first-ever oil painting was inspired by a photograph I found on AccuWeather.com. That photo was ascribed to “JohnstownWildfire,” the tradename of professed storm chaser and photographer Ron Shawley of Johnstown, PA. I tracked him down and he gave me permission to use his photo. Ron explained he was out with his camera before a big snow when he came across this kitten. It looked so forlorn in the cold snowy weather that Ron responded to his pathos and recorded the moment.

Oil and acrylic painting is essentially the reverse of watercolor. In these, the darks are established first and the background completed before laying down the foreground and ending with the highlights and whites. In a watercolor, the white of the paper is the “lightest light” and is preserved by working from the lighter shades through the midtones and ending with the darks.”

The “AccuWeather Kitten” as it came to be called on a Facebook Group, has certainly made the rounds on the Internet. On the Photo Gallery, it has been viewed 869,325 times, the second-most of any photo on our gallery. It also made it into “I Can Haz Cheezburger?” with 257 different captions plus about two dozen more.

The photo also stands as the most-commented photo in our gallery. Hundreds of comments include controversy about whether the cat should be rescued, and even updated information from Ron:

“Update on the cat. He is well and very much on his own. He is by far the best mouser I have. He is very smart as I have tried to use traps to catch him with no luck. He is well feed, by us, and by his ability to catch mice, rats, etc.” (then later, with the photo below): “This is the little gray kitten, that has held the number one spot for some time. As you can see he is all grown up. To put you all at peace, he lives inside during the night, but daytime he travels. Trust me he is king, most dogs won’t mess around with him at all. “

Ron also later admitted that the kitten wasn’t only living inside – it had a name: “Ashes.” But here’s my question… what does this cat’s brother (mother? sister?) think about all this? After all, he was photographed on that day too, but only got 5% of the attention (based on page views)!