A Day In The Life...

Cats are funny and they totally have it made. I thought I'd share with you a morning in the life of one chunky cat I know.

8:30 AM wake up - Jolie wasn't really thrilled about this part because she usually isn't up and around until somewhere around 9 AM.

Time to get up and get moving!

Jolie sleeps on blankets laid neatly around the house. She refuses to sit anywhere there isn't a blanket. She sleeps in bed with us, at our feet on that blue blanket. She's a spoiled kitty.

Gotta scratch (poor girl has no claws though) and stretch a little.


Now it's time for some exercise. This is Jolie's version of the stair climber.

Working out...

Jolie needs to fuel up for her day with some food and water.

Here you can see that Jolie's haircut is growing out for Fall/Winter.

Don't worry, I didn't get pictures of Jolie doing "her business".

I just wanted to tell this little story...

We purchased this new litter box back in May, it's called a "Litter Robot" (there is a silly video on the linked site showing how it works if you feel so inclined). That sphere rotates out the used litter.

Unfortunately, we hadn't been able to get Jolie to use it exclusively until just last week. We tried everything from taking the sphere off the base to see if she was just scared of being in the thing, unplugging it, and even putting a regular litter pan on top of the base to try to fix the problem.

Turns out the lights on the front of it freaked her out. We thought this might be the case when she used it when it was unplugged. So I proceeded to cover the lights with some electrical tape and **presto** she uses the Litter Robot exclusively.

She's smarter than we give her credit for.

Here's a close up of the lights. The green light turns to a red on in the center when the globe is spinning, and a yellow one to the right when the box senses that a cat has used the box. If I were her I would be a tad bit afraid the thing would start spinning with me inside it too.

Business taken care of, it's time to go outside for some fresh air...

Gregg and I screened in parts of our railing around the deck and put up a gate so that Jolie wouldn't roam freely around the neighborhood. Back at our last place, we had a fence which kept her contained for the most part, but here in Nebraska we have no fence. I had recently found Jolie laying in the middle of the road taking in some sun, which totally freaked me out. We live in a quiet neighborhood outside of town, but laying in the road just isn't smart.

Amazingly enough, the screen has kept my girl on the deck happily for at least a month now. She so loves it outside, and I'm glad she's safe out there now.

Time to go back inside and start the whole rotation over again. Sleep, eat, sun. Sleep, eat, sun...

Outdoor Education

In Papillion, sixth graders do something called Outdoor Education. The two classes went camping overnight at the end of September. They left early in the morning (that's when this photo above was taken) and returned the following evening as everyone else was getting out of class. I am still amazed that the schools here are able to coordinate such an event and have so much fun doing it. The kids stayed in small groups with adult supervision. They slept in cabins, took hikes, wrote poetry, did some trust courses, and generally just had fun learning about nature and spending time together.

I wish we could have done this as kids, it really sounds like a lot of fun. Payton doesn't look so thrilled in that picture, but believe me, Outdoor Ed was all she (and all the other kids) talked about since school started this year. She was beyond excited.