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.