Feline mind games

An imperious Tiny looks down upon her humble servant from high atop the shower stall this morning, granting us a brief audience in a "theory-of-mind" moment that called to mind this image of the Babe peering over the top of our computer a couple of years back:

A few excerpts from that December 2005 post that took off from Baby's picture, "Birds, it seems, can have theories of mind, too":

Babe [in the above photo] assumes an "eternal feline" pose that would strike fear in the heart of any small member of the Avian-American or Rodent-American communities. Lord of all he surveys, with massive head looming over the iMac G5 (gray and white margin at bottom of photo is the top of our computer) this afternoon in the countdown to supper, he stares beyond us out the window at — what else? — things we don't see. The look recalled an American Primitive painting reproduced in an exhibition review in the Dark Ages of our tender youth when we actually read Time Magazine on a weekly basis. We don't remember any of the specifics, but the image (below, right), seared itself into our consciousness.

Meanwhile back to this morning, Tiny (below) strikes a thoughtful pose. Or is she turning away in dismay at the relentless flashing of our new Pentax 8x? The good folks of Pentax gave us the compact digital camera free of charge last March in response to our bloggy assertion that "We will never buy another Pentax" after the company had informed us unceremoniously that our beloved but ailing Optio 450 "was recently added to the list of cameras no longer serviceable by the Pentax service center." We accepted their gift with pleasure at the time but never got around to using it till just the other day. Why is that, you ask? Because after Pentax refused to service the old one, Jack-of-all-trades Mr. Tuck managed to fix it, giving us a good nine months more of service from the Optio 450 until just the other day, when the old boy finally gave up the ghost, prompting us to bite the bullet, read the manual and get up to speed on that free Pentax 7x, our new love. The size of a pack of cards, it's more compact and has fewer visible moving parts than Optio 450. You turn it on with a magician's swipe of your right hand, opening a sliding lens cover, and instead of a protruding apparatus, the camera stays flat, with all focus adjustments and other mysterious goings-on taking place behind closed doors inside the "box."

In the countdown to supper later on, backlit by the rays of a low-lying winter sun flooding the front hall, Babe's thoughts turn inward as visions of chicken bits dance in his head.

Comments

[mog]

The cats are most exquisite in their closeups. Your new camera sounds lovely too. Such a deal.

[retriever]

Nice, especially the last one. I am AMAZED you got those indoors. With flash? Or just available light? I got so fed up with the cats and dog's eyes looking like mad zombies when I used flash that I no longer use flash at all but this means I miss a lot. The D300 can practically take pictures in the dark (novice photographers like me need better equipment than those with experience and natural talent), but I also have an Olympus 1050sw bought to spare the kids' feelings as they HATE me being a paparazzi (waterproof and drop and freeze proof) with a similar flat lens and sliding cover that isn't very good indoors w available light. No indoor images as lovely as those of the cats.
The bane of my indoor picture taking existence are the compact fluorescent bulbs frugal husband insists on putting in every lamp. They may be cheap, but they give skin tones this ghastly greenish yellow cast. The gungho bossy boots at the camera store says "Oh, you just do this to the white balance, and that to the light blah blah, and lectures on.

This year I have found that incandescent Xmas lights give a much more natural glow to people and animal nighttime shots--a great improvement. Am threatening to do a St. Lucia shot of my girls with these tacky-in= real-life-but-pretty-photographed strung star lights from China as a crown...

[Teresa]

Well, that was very decent of Pentax to provide you with a replacement camera. Good for them.

And it looks like you will have much much fun taking pics of the kitties in all their glory. :-)

[Gayle Miller]

Bravo to Pentax for making these marvelous pictures of two of my beloved furry friends possible! Truly - they are exquisite cats in every way.

From me and Sam the Wonder Cat - Meowry Christmas!

[Eathen Richardson]

I love the third photo from the bottom, its very sweet. Your cat does have a certain wry look too which makes her very photogenic! You might want to see if your feline friend could benefit from Paula Robb’s Complete Cat Training!