Entertainment

Pet projects

breadingcats.com (
)

Stuffonmycat.com (
)

foodonmydog.com (
)

You can find anything on the Web these days — and photos of pets doing silly things are no exception. But for every shot that garners an “aww” or a LOL, there are commenters who only see insensitivity. “Every once in a while I get a message saying what I’m doing is cruel,” says Andrew J. Small, founder of FoodOnMyDog.tumblr.com, a site where Small posts photos of his dog balancing food on her head. “But my dog is just performing a trick, and after every photo she receives loads of love and affection.” Hear that, haters? Here are a few of our favorites.

Dogs waiting for their humans (dwfth.tumblr.com)

In 2007, graphic designer Frank Olinsky noticed a growing trend in his Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, neighborhood: dogs waiting alone for their owners outside of coffee shops and delis. He started snapping photos of the tied-up pups to document how each was responding to the brief period of separation and with the help of a friend, turned this urban art project into a blog. Five years later he’s still taking photos.

A few rules he abides by: no humans in the frame and no sad-looking dogs, which might indicate cruelty issues. “There are now over 300 dogs on the site and after all this time I still get a kick out it,” says Olinsky.

MaddieOnThings.com

Photographer Theron Humphrey’s blog evolved out of a dare: Theron’s friend bet him that he couldn’t get Maddie, his 2-year-old Coonhound, to stand on four soup cans. He did, and now Humphrey takes a photo of Maddie standing on something each day.

“Now not only am I looking for folks to engage with during my travels,” says Humphrey, whose other current project includes photographing one human per day while traveling the country, “But I’m also looking for things for Maddie to stand on. It feels like a scavenger hunt.”

FoodOnMyDog.tumblr.com

When Andrew J. Small placed a ham and cheese sandwich on the head of his 6-year-old terrier-bulldog mix Tiger, he didn’t know that he’d start an Internet trend. He snapped a photo, sent it to a friend and an idea was born.

Small started the site in December 2011 and now uploads between five and seven photos per week of obedient Tiger (who’s also a pro at performing tricks) balancing food on her head. “After every photo, I give Tiger lots of love and affection, and reward her with a treat,” says Small.

BreadingCats.com

When Lynn Tessaro stumbled upon a Twitpic of a cat poking her face through a slice of bread, she knew she had to do something with the hilarious idea. So she started a blog and partnered with Eduardo Valdes, who created the graphics for the site (as well as T-shirts), and invited readers to submit photos of their own “breaded” cats.

They receive submissions on a daily basis featuring carbed-out kitties, plus hilarious commentary from their owners. “We get a lot of positive feedback from cat lovers all over the world,” says Tessaro. “The bottom line is that people just love to laugh!”

StuffOnMyCat.com

Mike Chace and Nat Berman purchased StuffOnMyCat.com in 2011, knowing they could do more with it than its original owner, who started it in 2005. While he had put the theme on the map, including site features like forums, live chat and a comment and voting system, they all proved too distracting.

Chace and Berman, meanwhile, had had success with other pet-related sites such as Kittentoob.com, so when they redesigned this site, they made it more user-friendly. All of the photos on the site are now user-submitted, and there are currently more than 1,000 pictures that haven’t been published yet (they get about 300 submissions each month). “We really stumbled into the cat niche here,” says Chace. “We can’t figure out why, but people just love hilarious cat photos.”