This is another one of Jasmine, the Missile Impersonating Cougar!

Jasmine is a very social little girl, and for being a tiny, 80lb lady, has the biggest motor of all the cougars I've worked with to date. When she turns on the purr-machine to the high setting, she can easily be heard fifty feet away. Her chirp, should the purr not be attention-getting enough, is piercing enough to rattle your brain and send a chill up your spine, even at the same fifty-foot distance. She's really quite demanding of attention, and has to have it right NOW!

Inside it all, Jasmine is a very gentle soul; she just has a very violent way of getting her attention fix. There's just nothing more pleasing to her than to be picked up, held tightly, and scratched and fuzzled the whole time.

I said it in another pic of her in the gallery - forgive me for repeating it here - but going in the cage with Jasmine has it follies. The trick is to get right up to her as quickly as possible, otherwise, you leave yourself vulnerable to Missile Attack (tm, pat pend). Here's how it goes:

Jasmine starts out on the far side of the cage. She crouches down, and puts those little, built-in cleats into the ground for maximum launch capability, revvs up the oversized turbine engine to full power, kicks in the afterburner, and then launches on a direct intercept course. Once she hits airborne velocity, she takes to the air, and meets up with the center of your chest about three-and-a-half nanoseconds later at an relative airspeed of mach-two. She then explodes into a furry bundle of joy and purring.

There's two outcomes here: A) you have your back smartly against the fence and you manage to catch her in mid-air (which is what she wants), or B) you’re standing there stupidly with nothing to hold you upright when she hits (remember that equation from physics? Energy = mass x velocity squared? In other words, you don't have a chance!). In other words, you're not standing any more, and you are now staring up into the sky - My! What lovely clouds there are today! - with a fuzzy, purring, 80lb weight perched upon your chest, pinning you to the ground.

In the end, Jasmine gets what she wants either way. Her singular purpose is to take you under her magic spell - sorry, no saving throws! - so you'll hug her tightly in your arms, flip her upside down, and scratch her chest until she's satisfied.

So this is a quiet moment, where Jasmine is found, recharging her batteries, laying mostly quiet, but with that head in the upside-down way that cats are sometime wont to do. I just couldn't resist snapping a few shots before she moved. I've always wondered if cats do that just to see the world from a different vantage, just to keep things in clear perspective. Maybe Jasmine will tell me someday.

This picture was taken 12-Apr-04. The image was taken with a Canon EOS 10D and the EF 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 USM lens. The original was taken at full frame of 3072x2048x24b, ISO eqv 400, 1/10 shutter, f/5.6. This image was shrunken down for space conservation.

Disclaimer: I hate to have to put this on here, but the pic is copyright me. Please do not distribute, copy, alter, etc, without my permission. Having said all that, feel free to download and use it for your own inspiration.