This is a series of images I took during last year's vacation in Italy.
A young female cat came to visit us at the house that we had rented for the holidays. We gave her cream and milk and she showed up most mornings after breakfast.
A couple of days into our vacation she must have felt, she needed to thank us and reply in kind.
When I saw that she was crouching low and getting into the hunting spirit, I got my tele zoom, put shutter speed on 1/1250 sec and tried to catch images of her chase. During a hunt, cats move so fast, that only a very fast shutter speed can freeze her movements. At least 1/1000 sec is required, if you don't want to have a blurred cat.
She had found not a mouse but a small lizard that lived abundantly in the stone walls surrounding the garden.
Things moved fast after that - she played with the poor animal in the typical cat's behaviour and the lizard lost its tail.
She left him lying as a present for us. We tried to save him in the shade, but the lizard did not have a chance :(.
A few days later, walking back from lunch, I met her outside on the path, when she suddenly jumped in my way with a miauw. She led me to the side, where a small cat was hiding in the bushes, and she lay down and nursed her child. I was wondering why she had done that, drawing my attention to her hidden and slightly frightened child. I thought then, that we might see both of them the next day for breakfast.
It took two days, but then the mother showed up again, circling around the garden with miauws, jumping up and down the surrounding wall, until we saw a young kitten hiding in the bushes up on the wall. With lots of coaxing, she led her very shy daughter down to the dish of cream and introduced her to us.
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