First Cat Outings of the Year

[cimorene]

Signs of spring so far here in the Finnish archipelago, a couple of islands out from the southwestern tip of the mainland in Turku, 60° north, the same latitude* as St Petersburg, Uppsala (Sweden), Oslo (Norway), Mainland in the Shetland isles (Scotland), and the border between the Yukon and the Northwest Territories in Canada:

• The crocuses bloomed last week and finished already.


• The street washing and sweeping truck was here twice this week trying to get the sand/gravel off the roads now that most of the ice has melted.


• It has been just under 15° C (59° F) all week. Such quick turnaround that I didn't get a chance to wear my light jacket between the light coat Monday and the flannel shirt yesterday.


• Chickens across the street let out yesterday for the first time this year and yelling (well, clucking) in extreme delight about it for hours at a time. (Today too, but less yelling.) (Ugh!!!! I want some chickens!!!!!!)


• Wax propped open the door to the balcony for the first time today and the cats spent several hours celebrating. Snookums mostly sat in the sun and talked about it and Tristana mostly ran around the house at top speed, zinging and bouncing off the walls, and shrieked about it while Wax was trying to talk on the phone.

So now that they felt the outside air the cats started clamoring to go outside again. You may remember that what our cats do outside is mostly just eat grass and then barf the grass back up immediately though, and all our grass is still dead. I took them outside, thinking they'd get tired of it quickly, but actually it took quite a while. (Even though they couldn't find any grass to eat. Snookums looked and then sat down to bask, and Tristana just stared around like 🤩 and occasionally ran very fast for a few yards.)





*We're warmer than them, though, except Uppsala, because of the Gulf Stream.
**"Although it lies approximately twice as far away from the Equator as from the North Pole, the 60th parallel is half as long as the Equator line, due to the cosine of 60 degrees being 0.5. This is where the Earth bulges halfway as much as on the Equator."

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

SPRING OMG

I heard a redwing blackbird today -- guaranteed to make me smile

[cimorene]

Now you say that, I've heard my parents talk about those a lot. A common experience across North America I guess. I never paid attention to birds when I was there, apparently, because it doesn't look that familiar to me...

[viggorlijah]

Spring fever!