A Pink Cat and a Green Chick

Seen in last Monday’s paper …

Photo published on http://www.nieuwsblad.be/
on Monday, Sept. 27th, 2010

This poor little kitten – a stray cat that used to roam the streets of Swindon (U.K.) as a bright white feline - has been died pink by an unknown joker. Luckily the culprit was careful enough not the smear the dye in the animal’s eyes or mouth. The cat is therefore in good health, except for its unusual colour.

As there is no effective, yet harmless soap or detergent to remove the dye, the vet who took the animal in estimates that it will take 1 tot 1.5 year before ‘Pink’ – because that’s the kitten’s name from now on - will have ‘outgrown’ its pink coat.

Personally, I don’t know how to react. On the one hand I think it’s outrageous to treat an innocent and helpless creature like that. On the other, you must admit that Pink looks very pretty and cute! Maybe this cat can audition for a part in a new Pink Panther film?

This reminds me of the time when I used to work for a light bulb manufacturer. The international marketing department with headquarters in Switzerland had decided to completely re-look the packaging of our products, replacing the bright apple-green boxes by a more subdued green-bluish carton. In order to promote this new packaging with our distributors, I was asked to come up with an catchy idea for a cover photo for a brochure.

It was around Easter and on television I saw a program about incubators in which little chicks were hatched. The fluffy yellow chicks looked very attractive. This gave me the idea to shoot a photo of one green chick standing amongst a little flock of yellow chicks. The slogan would read: “Quality will always stand out!” or something like that. It sounded better in Dutch!

We hired a professional photographer who ‘borrowed’ two dozen chicks from a farmer. Three days later he came to our office in Brussels carrying thirty or so photos of the chick family. He explained that it hadn’t been easy to get a good shot, as the chicks were very lively and nervous, jumping and fluttering around in the large box in which he had put them. There was one outstanding photo though, with one little chick standing – or should I say ‘posing’ - in front of the flock, his little head proudly held high and with one short leg elegantly placed in front of the other.

Our advertising agency did a brilliant job, ‘dyeing’ this talented little chick in the stylish greenish-blue or was it bluish-green that would be the colour of our new packaging. In order not to upset any animal protection movements – and we have a very powerful one in Belgium, called Gaia - we put a disclamer on the backcover of the brochure stating that the protagonist in the picture had been Photoshopped and not dyed. You just can’t be too careful, can you?

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