Day 98 - Peacekeepers

chill, cat...

We went on a photography course today.  It was a basic introduction to DSLR cameras, which seems a little inappropriate, as we don't have one...

Anna does have a really nice Compact DSLR (which isn't actually a DSLR), though.   Still, it has the same functions, and of course the same principles of photography apply regardless of type of camera.  So we learned some useful stuff about f-stops and shutter speeds, focal length and aperture size.  I'd go so far as to say that it was worth getting up at the usual work time on a Saturday morning for!

At home this afternoon, I spent half an hour messing around, erm I mean practising, of course, with various settings, and trying to get photo's with a narrow depth of field.  In other words, trying to get the subject in focus and everything else blurred to some degree. 

Some sort of annoying software malfunction on Anna's camera causes it to use ridiculously slow shutter speeds inappropriately, which was a bit of a challenge, but I managed two or three reasonably nice shots.

cat chilled...

In the process of taking these pictures, I realised that Jazz and Loz are increasingly becoming buddies.  More and more, I find them together, in the kitchen, or on the sofa, or wherever, usually around a metre or so apart.  I think they've started to find some comfort and safety in each others company.

(I also just realised how they're both in a couple of previous blog photo's...)

There's an interesting theory about calming signals, which says that dogs send out body language messages all the time, to others around them.  The purpose of these signals is to encourage calmness in other dogs, humans, or in this case cats, often by doing things that display a calmness in the signaller.  Dogs will yawn, or slowly close their eyes (cats do this too), or look away casually, or a whole range of other behaviours.

In the top photo, you can see that Loz is in Alert mode.   This is a critical stage of the Predation Process, which goes something like;

Scan, Alert, Target, Stalk, Chase, Bite, Kill.

Loz may even be in Target mode, if she's spotted potential prey over in the hedgerow. 

Consequently, Jazz is looking in the same direction, but with soft eyes, no tension in his face, and ears back.  These are clear signals to Loz to calm down, to resist conflict.

In the next photo, Loz has responded to Jazz's calm energy by coming out of Alert mode - in fact, by dropping out of the Predation Process altogether - and going back to eating grass. 

Jazz agrees with this by politely looking away, still no tension in his face.

And so an easy peace is maintained, despite no physical interaction whatsoever, and without either of them even looking at each other!

We humans could learn a thing or two about keeping the peace, from dogs. 

Funnily enough, cats are very different.  If Jazz is too excited, Loz has her own fairly blunt signal that Jazz should calm down immediately - she just gets into his space, fixes him with an intimidating stare, and then swipes his flanks with her claws!

We humans could learn a thing or two about not keeping the peace very effectively from cats....or Americans...

Ooh, miaow!

In other news, here's a daffodil, all nicely focussed and whatnot.