Sansa the flying circus cat
My son's fiancé was playing with her cat this evening. She makes it try and catch a stuffed mouse and it loves this game. It leaps high into the air as she flings the stuffed mouse up, often getting about two times its height off the ground.
As I like taking pictures, I decided to arc up the old K-3 camera. I rarely take flash pictures even though I have a top of the range Pentax P-TTL flash. Also, with using the flash, the slight delay between pushing the shutter button and the camera firing makes it hard with a fast moving subject like a cat in full flight. Basically I have to fire the camera about a quarter of a second before I want it to take the shot. Getting this right takes a bit of practice.
These pictures are just 'snaps' and I didn't originally take them with the plan to post them; but why not? It also gives me a chance to try out some SquareSpace 7 formatting options that allows posting images side-by-side.
The following pictures are all 1000 pixels high when full size so a 1920 x 1080 screen should show them full height when they are clicked.
In this first picture Sansa is way too low. You can see the stuffed mouse at the top of the picture.
In this second picture she is about 1.5 times her height off the ground and she has enough height but the mouse has been pulled off to the right of the picture by the person 'teasing' her with it. So she missed it.
In the next picture she almost has it. She has the height and line right but she just misses it as she reaches out, claws fully extended, trying to hook it.
The following two pictures are of landings. She has missed the stuffed mouse and now her focus is on hitting the floor.
In both 'landing' pictures her full attention is now on judging contact with the floor and calculating a soft landing. Rear legs contact first and take the shock in those large rear muscles then the body and front come down—not unlike a 747 jet airliner coming down really.
Because she knows the floor is slippery—from many times of playing this game before—she has her claws in so she lands on her grippy pads.
Cats are frigging amazing.
Barry.