Nikita vs. Da Bird (dialup warning)

Sort of outtakes, sort of not. I.e I only put the very best photos into my long "Nikita pictures" thread but I thought these were too fun not to share

I recently got the Da Bird toy and Nikita is in love. She spent over 30min yesterday digging at the cabinet where I keep the toy hidden away when I'm not using it to play with her. She really wanted to get at it.

After a long chase I take it off the string and let her maul it a bit (I have replacements ready)

Rawr!!


It's not dead yet!


Well it is cat "furniture" after all..


Going into a backflip


She jumped out of frame, heh..


About to catch it


Twisty jump


Slam! (and yes she ended that leap by crashing into the wall in front of her. She's not quite mastered the art of having a feel for her own momentum at all times)


Da Bird! - featuring Nikita in the background


Streeetch


Walking away with HER price at the end


mine mine minemine mine!


Also here's a short video clip on youtube of her catching Da Bird:

cool pics, is da bird on a fishing line type cord? it looks like a good toy, she has so much energy, after a few minutes of playing Mellow just lays down rolls over and swats at toys from his back!

Nikita is amazing as always! Nice pictures! Da Bird seems to be a very popular toy with cats. How are you taking the pictures while playing with her? I'd like to learn!

Da bird is just the best cat toy ever.

It's these feathers on a svivel head, you can then fasten them onto the main rod and string part of the toy. It's a black string, not a fishing line.

Nikita likes to walk all over the house with her "prize" when she's caught it successfully after a long chase so I snuck my hand in and unhooked the feather bit so she could walk around without dragging the long pole behind her. Then she started playing with it some more and I snapped some of the photos. That's why you can't see a string in some of them, there's isn't any then

Anyway because of how the feathers are arranged and that they're attached to the string on as vivel head they spin in the air as they move and make a sound that's not unlike the sound of birds flying. Also it moves a bit erratically because it's spinning. In short it mimics a real bird pretty well and most cats go bonkers over it.

It takes more than 10min for Nikita to run out of energy and she recharges quickly. It's very easy to tire her out with the Da Bird toy though

Originally Posted by Duchess15

Nikita is amazing as always!

Nice pictures! Da Bird seems to be a very popular toy with cats. How are you taking the pictures while playing with her? I'd like to learn!

Click to expand...

Since the Da Bird has such a long pole I'm just holding the camera in one hand and the pole in the other. I have my lens zoomed to a wide angle (so as much of the room is in frame as possible) and then crop closer in photoshop afterwards. Then I don't need to worry too much about trying to catch her in the photo. I just aim the camera in her general direction and hopefully she'll be in frame. I took probably around 60 photos playing with her in just one day there, lots of them weren't any good but a bunch was fine.

Holy moly, she's quite the acrobatic!

Nothing better than Dabird Great pics!!

Wow! Look at her go!
She`s such a stunning girl