Gapen's gatos!!

photo taken by Tom Gapen

Daily News Assistant News Editor Tom Gapen and his wife Linda are total cat people according to a conversation we had the other day. " We love all animals but dogs are higher maintenance so we have kitties," said Tom. Hmmmm...where have I heard that before? Chris and I only have cats at the moment because of that very reason. But that's not to say that we'll never ever get a dog.

Anyway...back to Tom! According to the bio on his photo-heavy Visual Kaos blog, the moon is his planet and (aside from kitties) he loves rain, good, strong coffee and the sound of a Gibson ES-335. And I know from the pure coincidence of randomly bumping into him at a Pearl Jam concert, that he is indeed a fan of really good music (you can see by the awesome photo of Shirley Manson) at the top. Read his blog! It's an entertaining read to say the least.

But of course this is all about Tom's cats. Check out lots of photos his kitties here at Tom's website tresgatos.net.

There you'll see Joey the big black cat. He's a healthy 24 pounds...WOWEE!! :). Then there's Iggy the little calico and Spooky the big maine coon who, as you can tell, loves to stick his nose in cameras (not sure how much he weighs though).

Tom inherited Joey and Iggy from his wife. They were both strays. Joey jumped onto the roof of her car at the beach while she found Iggy was running around in her yard. Tom adopted Spooky from the East Valley Animal Shelter.

To see more of Tom's photography visit his flickr page here. Right now he's got some phenomenal pictures of California poppies. And if you click further you'll come across a beautiful house finch and a close-up of a coyote!!

This is the first post in a series of profiles on Daily News staffers and their pets. One of the best ways to get to know about a person is through their pets...wouldn't you say?

So contact me if you want your critter (I say that in a loving way) to be spotlighted.