This is another one of Nemesis.

It's not that he's really in a bad mood, and he's not just genuinely irked at me (although that happens sometimes). In this case, he's walking by Mariah, his cagemate, and she's the one in a bad mood, so he's just doing the cursory snarl to let her know that she can just stay right where she is and keep the snarls to herself. How can I tell? Well, that leads me to the next feline trivia lesson!

One can tell a lot by a cat's body language. That's true of many animals. In Nemesis' case, look at his ears. Yes, he's got a pretty aggressive snarl on his face, and out-of-frame to his right, is where Mariah is. If you can't tell how I know that, look at his right ear. See how it's laid back? See how the left ear is perked forward (oriented on me, btw)? Also notice how that right ear's not laid completely flat? Also notice how his head's tilted just slightly to better orient that laid-back ear on his target (aka Mariah)? Now, look at his whiskers. See how the right ones are laid back a little? And the left ones are forward, but not all the way?

In the most general terms, the slant of the ears, the pitch of the whiskers, and the tail-twitch factor for a cat can reveal an awful lot about what's coming in the next few seconds. For example, if the ears are totally perked, the whiskers are jutting entirely forward, just the very tip of the tail is lashing, then kitty is in full-predator mode. That means the targeting routine is locked on target, and if you're the one that happens to be in the laser sights, then you're about to be leopard food! There is no hope. You're doomed. There's not a dern thing you can do. If said leopard is less than 20-feet from you, then you'll not see more than a blur as it stand, bolts forward, and hits you at about mach 2. Leopard (and jags too) have such an incredible reflex ability, there's just no hope at all for a human to be able to react to the simply insane speed of their movements.

In the case of this pic, if you look closely at Nemesis' overall body-tension, you can see that while he's extremely muscular, he's not overly tense. If he were /really/ snarling at me, or worried about Mariah for that matter, then you'd see his body in a much more tense-and-ready-for-attack state. So here's the end-result of this pic:

Nemesis is walking down the side of the cage towards me. Mariah's in a bad mood, and is snarling at him constantly (think "old, married couple" ), but all Nem really wants is a shoulder scratch, which is his ultimate motivation why he's headed towards me. So he comes towards me, and he'll get right into the chain-link, head-on with me, and give me a genuine snarl. It's not about me; it's about Mariah. It's that "She can be /such/ a bitch!" snarl. Just a comment. An expression of exasperation. :)

After a moment of frustration release, he'll turn sideways and put his shoulder into the wire, knowing that I'll scratch wherever he allows, which I do. Eventually, he'll just flop out on the ground there, and let me scratch to my heart's content. Well, almost. He's not usually one to remain for very long. He gets as many scritches as he wants, and then he'll roll over and away from the wire and be done with it. He's kinda particular that way. He's not one that needs much attention; he /likes/ it, but just not a /lot/ of it.

So this is another of the regal Nemesis. I hope you like it, this one being a bit more of a snarly pose. :)

This picture was taken 22-Nov-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, 1/250 shutter, f/5.6. This image was shrunken down and cropped 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.