AccuKitten, Painted
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:
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:
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)!
