spring light cats

It's springtime in Seattle and the longer days are very welcome. (Some of our shortest days over the winter were less than 8.5 hours, with sunrise at 7:55am and sunset at 4:20pm.) The light has been really interesting recently when it's late in the day and the sun reflects off of Fremont/Phinney Ridge to the north, a great view from our living room.

Our cats are also slowly but surely getting better at snuggling with each other, and I managed to capture them being extra adorable in their perch this week. We had them at the vet today for checkups and booster vaccine/microchip for Margot, and we learned that Rowen is currently 7.7 pounds and Margot is 10.3 pounds.

one more cat update for the weekend

Margot is a creative lounger, as I mentioned earlier. She was being extra cute again today in the office perch. Not to be outdone, Rowen had her own sleep-stylings going on in the lounge chair.













Lastly, we came back from the market today to witness this adorable scene through the window. We were originally worried the cats would only ever tolerate each other, so to watch them growing closer every day, rather quickly too, is fantastic and we are thrilled. We're so lucky to have two healthy, unique, lovely, affectionate cats. We are cat lottery winners.

Rainy Sunday at the Noble Fir, merging the cats

Last Sunday we went to Ballard and had a drink at our favorite bar, the Noble Fir. The Sunday Market was going on so it made for good people/dog watching.

The big news however is that our two cats are finally living together most of the (day)time. They chase each other a lot and get into occasional spats, but there is also mutual grooming happening, and they'll even share lounge space with Dustin on occasion. Margot loves to lay on and with Dustin in that chair, it is super cute. We keep them apart at night but hope to have full cat-merge in effect over the next week or two. So far so good!

weekend

Today we walked to Fremont to take a tour of the Fremont Brewery and try one of their hyper-seasonal fresh hopped beers. We stopped at Milstead & Co. afterward, then the Fremont Vintage Mall which contained wonderful treasures as always.
Lastly, Margot gets free reign of the downstairs bedroom/other rooms and the office most of the time now thanks to the cat gate we put up. We found her sleeping like that in the office the other day. I'm very happy she's a hilarious sleeper, that is a nice bonus in a cat.

winter in Seattle

Some scenes from winter walks in Seattle at Golden Gardens Park and Discovery Park. We also had a little bit of snow, a major event in Seattle.

Christmas 2013

Finally, a handful of photos from this past Christmas. My parents (Mom mainly to her credit) put up a beautiful tree as always. They collect glass ornaments, and over the years the tree has become a fantastic ornament cacophony of random glittering glass objects. There was even a fish parade played out in ornaments. Maddie also has a new kitten ("Topeka" or "Peka" for short) we finally got to meet. She is so bouncy and cuddly, way more mellow than Rowen. Meeting her was part of the reason we decided Rowen needed a friend to help dissipate some of her angst, as Peka showed us how chill a kitten could potentially be.

Another family tradition is diorama-making for various holidays, where we make tiny clay figures to populate a little cliche wooden box setting. So far we have Thanksgiving and Halloween. This year we attempted Christmas. A lot of the clay we used turned out to be modeling clay only, not the bake-able kind, and when we checked up on how our clay people were doing it was a total massacre. My brother's reaction captured for posterity.

Margot

Two months since my last post! A lot has happened; I have a backlog of photos to catch up with including John's visit to Seattle, our Christmas trip back to Illinois, and various other adventures. Expect some catch-up posts on these soon.

For today however, here is my first proper non-iPhone pictures of our new cat Margot (like the Tenenbaum)! She's been with us about 2.5 weeks now. She is a purebred Turkish Van, which is a naturally occurring breed from Turkey that is still fairly rare in the US. A great local breeder/rescuer that we know happened to have her available, and her personality seemed a good potential match for Rowen. We've been interested in the breed since we learned about them (they're very smart, people-oriented, often water-loving, and dog-like, a lot like Rowen!) and so far so good. Margot purrs like crazy and is confident enough to play and explore the house without much coaxing. She is 10 months old, about 2 months older than Rowen, but a lot bigger.

She and Rowen are still living separately and only briefly meeting. Rowen seems a little aggressive unfortunately, so we need to keep the introduction phase slow to make sure they have a good chance of a friendly relationship. The whole intention behind a second cat was to provide Rowen companionship and stimulation, so she had better come around!

In the meantime, here is Margot in all of her colorful glory. The full set of pictures is on Flickr here.