The return of the lazy

Here we are, us girls: a uni student at her mid-twenties, a 5-year-old cat, a 2-year-old Belgian Shepherd and an almost 2-year-old Maine Coon. This is our furry life in Helsinki.

 Meet Lilli. She's a very kind and calm little lady. She has few bad habits and flaws, mostly being slightly grumpy when the youngsters jump in her face.

Meet Dana. A large and a bit clumsy Coon girl with an impressive appearance of a young bobcat lets her best friend the dog treat her like one of her toys. You'd think she's about to get eaten or at least bitten to death but no, she only needs to give a vocal warning when it gets too rough for her liking, and the dog stops at once. 

I could say I'm gonna update this more frequently now but the truth is it's very bound to phase I am in. Sometimes I feel like writing more about myself or my pets, and that is something that only time can tell. Right now I feel like updating this in English because, frankly speaking, it has become my main language of writing. Probably you're still gonna see an update or a paragraph in Finnish, and of course, if someone Finnish would like to comprehend more then I'll sure put in translations and such, but only if you ask. Can't read anybody's mind, you know. :)

A page forward

Aloitanpa uuden luvun tämän blogin elämässä. En ole liikoja päivitellyt. Josko ensimmäinen tavoite olisi kaksikielisyys. Blogin alussa haaveilin maine coon -kissan hankkimisesta, edellisessä päivityksessä se taisi olla jo tuloillaan. No, kesäkuun alussa hain omani kotiin ja olemme taas kaksikissainen perhe. Kotonamme oli jo ennestään puolipitkäkarvainen 4-vuotias maatiaistyttö Lilli (tuttavallisemmin Pulski). Menetin Lillin edellisen kaverin Tashan diabetekselle reilu vuosi sitten, mistä olenkin kirjoittanut alemmaksi englanniksi. Tashan kuoleman jälkeen halusin täyttää taas tyhjäksi jääneen kissapaikan ja sen myötä kotiimme saapuikin Dana eli BigDaddy's Hermione Jean, joka on ruskeatabby tyttö.
Dana on komea coonineiti viittä kiloa hipovine painoineen (ikää löytyy nyt 8,5 kk), painovoimaa uhmaavine korvatupsuineen ja pulloharjamaisine häntineen. Se on koiran paras kaveri (kotiamme asuttaa myös 1,5-vuotias belgianpaimenkoiranarttu Iiri), kiltti kuin mikä, joskin hivenen hölmö, mikä varmaan kuuluu ikään!

It's been a while since the last post. My life has changed really much. As can be seen above, I changed the blog bilingual.

But first, I have a new kitten, 8,5 months old little miss Dana. She's bright-eyed and slightly stubborn, nearly 5 kilos of weight and brown tabby. I fetched her from the BigDaddy's cattery at the beginning of June.

The second thing is that I have left behind Northern Finland and started at the university of Helsinki. I'll be reading linguistics, Ancient Greek and Celtic languages but also general theology, philosophy and hopefully history. Studying requires many compromises which reflects also in our life, but I'm aiming for not having to compromise my pets' well-being.

Ja mitä se Feline Living sitten on? No se on tietysti kissamaista elämää. Ja tytöt sen elokuun muuttotohinoissa tiivistivät sujuvasti seuraavaan:

Dana (front) and Lilli express their way of feline living

A word of advice

I was just to write about something else but then a topic of more demand appeared into my mind. Today I've been spending some time in sites where people can announce pets for sale. You may know, the supply is huge. It lowers the prices and even makes people give pets for free.

Then I started thinking about the price policies. If it would be the matter of a material object in sale then it would be only natural to lower the price if there wouldn't be that much demand. Alas, a pet. I'd like to know why people are so narrow-sighted that they don't exactly come to think that the actual price of the pet is pretty much nothing when it comes to the upkeep of the whole life of an animal. For example, a cat. I paid 30 euros for Lilli. A quick calculation reveals that she costs nearly another 30 euros every month including only food and cat litter. I use more qualified food than usually (Royal Canin kibble and Applaws canned food), but that is something I think everyone should do. If not, prepare to care for your cat's illnesses resulting from poor food. I used to buy cheap market kibble even a year ago but as I started planning to have a puppy, I realised that I'm planning a healthy and proper diet for a dog so why shouldn't I treat my cats the same.

I'm not an example case of taking the best care possible of a pet (I haven't had her vaccinated and such), but even so, Lilli has cost dozens of times her selling price by the time of being a young cat. If we're lucky enough, she'll live four times her age of 4 this moment, you can do the math of her cost in the future, adding the vet fees when it comes to caring an aging cat. If you think you can lower the expenses by compromising your pet's needs, then think again of having one.

So, I can't understand why is it so crucial to get a cheap or free kitten/puppy. My future Maine Coon will be expensive and I do understand that people don't want to pay that much of a kitten. But, there's quite an amount of numbers between for example 30 and 1000. My choice is to save a lot to pay for a cat of breed. Your choice could be to save a little less but save anyway. If you pay 100 for a kitten you can demand for to get to know more of the backgrounds, health, vaccinations and deworming of your kitten. Maybe you can visit the litter more frequently than once compared to some pick one and go styled selecting. And PLEASE, castrate your cat.

Kind of casual stuff

The excitement has started to rise. I find myself waiting eagerly for my paychecks so that I can transfer money into my saving account. Still, there's plenty of other things I should purchase, proper wintertime jogging shoes for example. I promised myself to train for a 10 km run next May so I should start as soon as I've fully recovered of this flu. I have never been that much of a runner, I prefer walking and I was looking for walkathlons but couldn't find them. Then I thought that 10 km wouldn't be that bad, it's even realistic to achieve during a five month period. The half marathon would probably be achievable as well but it's too early for that. I'm only aiming for 10 km. :) After a brief Google research, though, it would seem that one can walk a marathon that is officially a running event. Maybe this is a matter of course for many people but I didn't know that.

I should redesign the layout of this blog, use more photos and such. It's been in my schedule many times but it's always been cut short when I have had to choose a photo. One not including Tasha. I guess it wouldn't matter even if I put an introduction photo where Tasha is included but it's still a kind of a fragile subject for me. We'll see.

Kitty business

My new baby kitten is probably on her way. :) The heat was on in the cattery of BigDaddy's as mommy and daddy of a fine quintet were combined to create another nice litter. I decided to have a pet/show level kitten instead of one for breeding as I'm only starting a Maine coon hobby. I got my dog, Iiri, for breeding despite the lack of experience with the breed, I guess that's all I need at the moment.

So the Christmas is over and such. It's unbelievable how quick it comes and goes and how few days it is for the peace and calmness. I got two presents for Lilli, the little den I spoke of in the last entry and a fishing rod. ;) I should get her more stuff, a tree and a feather toy at least. She has had a scratching post and has still, but it isn't that lot of fun as it's quite low and she only scratches it. I have planned to get a real tree trunk into my balcony and make a scratching tree of it myself, but there's a long way ahead.

I haven't got yet the enthusiastic fever of waiting for a kitten. Maybe it strikes when I buy something new for her. :)

Did life go on?

It's two months since Tasha's death. Life has been on its way back to track. I have moved closer to my birth town. I've been having a renovation going on in my new home. It's finally finishing. Lilli, my remaining cat, has been in the care of my mom as I wanted her to have a somewhat stable place to live instead of furniture wandering around, huge piles of cardboard boxes and walls to be painted. I guess I could have her here next week.

I miss Tasha still so much. Today I read my last entry in this blog for the first time after writing it. It was difficult. I have seen some photos of her. It's been so hard to realise that I couldn't have imagined her dead before the year end. What did I do wrong? When should I have acted? It's useless. It doesn't bring her back. One can only think that it shouldn't happen again. Try to learn.

I have started to plan a new kitten to the year 2012. It's probably a Maine coon from the cattery I have written about earlier. But we'll see. I don't know whether I want to breed them, a pet level kitten would do if not. But I'm quite sure that a kitten is in schedule for the next year.

I ordered a new cat den for Lilli for Christmas. :) She has never had one, I'm a bit nervous of how does she find it comfy. She's been seeming a bit lonely, no wonder. She has never really liked dogs but now she has started to bend. The puppies are still a bit too much for her with all that enthusiasm, but there are situations when she's perfectly relaxed in their presence. That usually can't involve more than one puppy. ;)

My baby girl's gone

Last Thursday turned out to be a very difficult one for me. On Wednesday Tasha was at clinic receiving liquefaction, just like I wrote in the last entry. I got her back after 5 pm. She was quite much in the same condition I left her there in the morning. I was told that if she wouldn't eat at home there would be another day of clinic liquefaction on Thursday.

The miracle didn't happen. As I watched Tasha refuse to eat a thing my heart became heavier each moment. This cat didn't have a will to live anymore. This cat wanted to crawl somewhere to die. It was my only duty to give it to her.

Thursday morning dawned sleepless and I called the clinic to ask for an appointment. I got it. Once more I put Tasha into a crate and left to see the vet. I watched her withered little figure twitch for the last time and life escape from her eyes forever. Gently I covered her with a towel and lifted her into a box. I shook hands with the vet, thanking her of everything and carried my sweet little friend into the car. The heavy weight on my shoulders was gone. I had given my girl the last favour she needed. She was painless. She was free.