"One day a friend of mine came to my office and I was showing them my best "before and after" shots. He was most impressed with the image of the dog and asked if I would do the same thing to an image of his cat that he wanted to print. I agreed, and once I delivered the finished file back to him he printed, framed, and hung the picture in the foyer of his home.6 months later I got a call from someone who had seen this cat picture and they asked how much I would charge to retouch their cat. I wasn't interested in doing it so I told her it would be $400 knowing that she wouldn't be able to afford it. Well guess what? She actually agreed to pay me $400 to retouch her cat! Apparently this lady was a huge cat person and had many other cat loving friends because once I delivered her the completed files I got 3 more phone calls in the next week asking me to do the same thing. It was the most bizarre week for my business ever.Some of these people gave me the picture and trusted me to make it look "better" but others were incredibly particular about what they wanted. One lady told me that she felt her cat was overweight and I should "make him skinnier" so he would look more like he did when she first found him. She also thought his ears were too large and asked if I could make them smaller. With each strange request my price continued to go up. I actually charged one lady $2000 to remove every wrinkle from her cat's body. The funny thing is, the cat didn't even look like the same breed anymore! At this point I am probably retouching around 1 cat per week. Obviously I don't advertise that I do this, it's embarrassing, plus if it ever got out I would probably lose all credibility in the industry or at least have too many jokes thrown my way. I still retouch commercial jobs on a daily basis and I love what I do but when those cat jobs come in I take them. It's easy money. When I'm out at the bar my friends introduce me as the "cat photoshopper" which is always a hit with the ladies, but at the end of the day, I feel like my main job is simply to make people happy and create the best looking image possible"