Early Morning Exercise

Want a snack? Got to exercise first! Photo instructions of Mr. Squirrel fitness routine:

Winter Is Coming

Does Stalone as all cats know when winter is coming and is trying to prepare?

Another Masterpiece

Yes another art masterpiece of Stalone's figurative sleeping: "Gray cat rectangle inscribed into white square cat bed in slightly unconventional position":

Enjoy!

Early Mornings

For me today’s morning started with Stalone cries at about 5 am. By the time I woke up and got out of the bed, he quieted down probably in despair.

I went to search for him: he wasn’t in the sleeping room, where he usually is around 5am trying to wake us up. Neither was he in the kitchen, or in the living room, or on the second floor. Trying to not think about crazy things I checked pantry, laundry room, basement, and even gazed behind the front door - he may have sneaked out at night and obviously couldn’t get back now if he did.

Stalone was nowhere to be found!

Nothing new came to my sleepy mind and I went around the house again. This was the time when I noticed restroom door being shut: we rarely close these, cats don’t approve locked doors. So this one being shut gave me a hope.

When I pushed the door open, Stalone was sitting on the toilet seat cover like a king. He couldn’t have been there for long, as he didn’t run to neither litter box or food bowl after regaining his freedom.

Instead he imposingly sailed out with not much more than a glance in my direction as if cat owners’ sole purpose is indeed to let their cats out of the restrooms where they lock themselves in at 5am on Tuesday morning.

And who really thinks any different?..

Pre-holiday Naps

Stalone is busy preparing for holidays which are imminent:

Good Night Everybody

Rare Moments

Apparently you can transform these Harry-Potter-kind-of-style live photos from iPhone into animated gifs... Enjoy :)

Happy M-Day!

Stalone is busy doing cat's job: being relaxed, warm and fluffy...

On a Birdwatch

Stalone wide awake back to his working duties: the bird watching...

Sleepy Caturday

It is getting colder and colder, and it seem that the only thing I wish for is more sleep... Stalone is trying to comply...

Stalone, the Spy

Yesterday, after finishing my yoga workout I accidentally sneaked up on Stalone sneaking up on a chipmunk waiting to sneak up some food birds were throwing around the bird feeder.

Whatever that chipmunk has nerves of steel or he simply didn't notice "tiny" Stalone behind him will remain unknown. But I snapped a picture to keep this moment in the history...

Picture quality isn't perfect, the light was pretty poor in the basement and I only had my iPad with me to work with.

Yuriy Can't Stop Sending Pics

...so I am spamming them around too:

Inscribed Cat Continued

Few more pics to previous article:

Inscribed Cat

Perfectly round Stalone, a maine coon cat, on a perfectly round Ikea ottoman. No advertising intended...

Stalone and a Foam Roller

Ever since my therapist suggested it few weeks ago I am including a foam roller into my exercise routine.

Stalone likes it as much as I do, maybe even more... He sticks his toys in the hollow space in the middle and runs from one side of roller to another trying to catch them. Sometimes successfully. See for yourself:

He also likes to chew on it, still need to figure out if the material they use is safe for that, but he seem to enjoy it...

Happy Friday from Stalone or Caturday is imminent

Stalone: Me is awake?

Stalone: It is just your imagination...

Stalone Is Recovering

It is very scary when a pet doesn't feel good. Most of the time they can't even tell what is wrong with them, all you can see if distressed animal behaving in unusual way. It is even more scary when this kind of thing happen on an a Friday night.

Last Friday I was packing up my things before heading home and laughing at funny pics of Stalone laying on his back sent from home, only to come back home and find him panicky running around the house. He was scared and seem to be in pain.

These are the pictures about an hour before he started acting scared and in pain:

And this is him next morning after hospital and pain killers:

They didn't find anything major with him. His blood test and vitals check up normal, x-ray showed minor constipation. So they gave him painkillers and some stool softners.

He still is on meds. And I am really hoping that the crisis is behind, because otherwise I don't know what may be wrong with him and what else we can do to help him...

New California Woods: Sunset

One of many pics we snap on our walks around the neighborhood:

What a nice place we live in :)

Moon, Jupiter and Venus

As I mentioned before, we often go on long walks around neighborhood. Sometimes we get to encounter something as remarkable as this: Moon, Jupiter and Venus forming a nice triangle. Sorry for the quality of the picture, this is as good as I could get with my phone at night.

This picture is taken at 20 June 2015 at 9:56pm around New California Hills neighborhood.

Few Pics from Walk Around

The weather here is gorgeous last few days, so we walk around the neighborhood every moment we get. And snap tons of pics which usually get on facebook, but I can share some here too. These are from yesterday:

Cats and Window

As I mentioned before, Stalone and Shiva don't usually bother to keep each other company except some rare moments.

Synchronous watching outside through the window in our bedroom is one of these rare moments. I am glad we had phone next by to snap few pics and save the moment:

New Cat Furniture

We've been to IKEA over the weekend and got some patio furniture for top patio (we really went there to buy some bed cloth, but, hey, who can leave IKEA w/o buying something they didn't really intend to buy when they walked into it?).

Of course cats think that it is cat furniture anyhow. The pics are a bit dark, but they are proving my point:

Lviv 2015: Shevchenkivsky Gai

I figured out that I didn't post few photos from Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural Life" which I took at the end of my recent trip to Lviv, Ukraine.

According to their website, the museum is one of the biggest open-air museum in Europe nowadays. It exhibits wooden folk architecture, everyday life items, art artifacts from various ethnographic zones of Ukraine of last three centuries.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make good quality pictures from inside of buildings using my phone due to lack of light, but I must say it was interesting to see all clothes, furniture, music instruments, ceramic, jewelry, icons, church accessories and other items associated with day to day live of Ukrainian villagers from the past.

Shiva and Windows

Shiva's debute in window cleaning services:

Shiva, a maine coon cat, likes to clean kitchen windows, or at least this is how I call when she start tapping and scratching on the window.

And she is probably trying to zoom in on birds or something...

Happy Monday Morning Cat

"How may I help you?"

"What? You want your coffee?"

"How about feeding me first?!"

As you can see Stalone likes our new kitchen sink, and the faucet. He already managed to wash his paws couple or times and turn the "cat shower" on his head as well...

Poor-Poor Cat

We managed to snap a perfect photo to illustrate a funny story about poor-poor cat whose bowl has been empty for whole 10 minutes already!..

Here it is: