One way of thinking about catchlights is to imagine that the eye as a spherical mirror. The catchlight is the reflection of the brightest thing reflected. You need to position the brightest light in such a place that it will reflect off the eye and back into the camera.
On the same note, the apparent size of the light has a big impact. I made a quick diagram – hopefully it will help someone.
Even on a cloudy day outdoors the sky will probably be the brightest object as well as the largest one. In the case of 20170524_ELF_4424.jpg (which is a really nice picture, by the way!) there is a catchlight, it’s just that the horizon is about 3/4 of the way up the eye and most of the sky is being blocked by the lamb’s eyelashes/eyebrow.
Here is a 1:1 crop illustrating what I mean:
I hope this helps…
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