For those of you out there who haven't had a cat, or are convinced that all cats are prissy snobs, I thought you might benefit from a recounting of part of my morning get-ready-for-work routine, and how our Siberians fit into it as major stress relievers!

Like many of you, I'm sure, I haul my butt out of bed at what seems like an ungodly hour (for those of you in the military, it's about the same time you'd be roused out in boot camp for morning PT!). Then I stagger into the shower to make a token attempt to wake up and get cleaned off for the day ahead. Sleeping beauty I'm not!

But unlike most of you, the instant I turn the water off, there's a little colorpoint kitty face staring in at me from outside the shower. Nina appears as soon as she hears the water go off and just sits there patiently while I get dried off,. Then I get out and sit down on the floor, draping the towel across my lap. She just starts purring up a storm, walking around me, periodically flopping down and rolling over to get a tummy rub. And then she crawls up in my lap and curls up for a marathon petting and purring session. Sometimes she even falls asleep, still purring!

Okay, that probably seems like a pretty wimpy thing for a guy to be doing (particularly if he's a big lug who's over two hundred pounds and stands a bit over six feet tall), but that just totally makes my day! I work in a job that can be pretty high stress sometimes, but morning kitty therapy really takes the edge off. The only downside is that I can count on being at least ten to fifteen minutes late to work!

So, do your own body a favor: get a couple Siberians and sign up for morning and afternoon kitty therapy stress-reduction sessions! 

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Having been a bit of a linguist (I majored in Russian with a minor in French and a tiny bit of German), I was curious to see in how many different languages I could find "Siberian cat."

I can't confess to a completely exhaustive search - I've been spending way too much time on what's turning out to be a historical novellette featuring Siberian cats, if you can believe it - but here's what I've found so far, plus some great submissions by other folks. Note that some of these are in non-latin alphabets, so your browser migh not "recognize" them if you don't happen to have that font set installed.

If you know how to say "Siberian cat" in a language that I don't have listed, or if I've made a mistake in the list above, please This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  and I'll include it here!

And a big "Thank you" for:

• Fran for the update to the French version
• Dar & Eyal for the Hebrew version
• Daisy for the Arabic version
• Merja for the Swedish version
• Ruta for the Lithuanian version
• Eamon for the Gaelic version
• Merja for the Estonian and Latvian versions
• Eva for fixing the Czech version
• Cristiana for the Portugese and Slovenian versions
• Corina for the Japanese version
• Marijke for correcting the Dutch version

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While I did add it as a link, I wanted to highlight it here in my little tap-tap-tappings to the web: if you're interested in Siberian cats, check out the SiberianCatList on Yahoo!

It's a great bunch of people who have or love Siberian cats and have made me feel very welcome. So if you've got one of these lovable Russian fuzzballs, check it out!

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My wife, Jan Hicks of ScrappingForever.com, does some awesome work with digital scrapbook layouts (not that I'm biased, or anything!). She recently did one of Sasha using elements that she created and the photo of our handsome young hunter that I wanted to share with you. Enjoy!

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What you feed your cat - Siberian or otherwise - is, obviously, of paramount importance to your friendly feline's health. It's just as important for them as it is for us (or any other animal), but just like we've done to ourselves with processed foods, we're also doing to them and our other animals. And this is not a good thing.

I've poked around on the web quite a bit looking for information on the subject of what to feed our furry friends, and I've come to the firm conclusion that the best thing for them is food that's as close as we can reasonably get to what their wild kin would find.

Okay, for the first time Sasha scared the willies out of me!

Not long after we brought him and Nina home, Sasha took a fall off the stairs up to our second floor. We don't know how far he fell, but he made a pretty solid thump when he hit the floor, loud enough that we clearly heard it in the next room. Fortunately he was okay, but after that I put up a cardboard barrier around the upstairs landing so he and his sister couldn't walk through the vertical supports in the stair rail and fall the twelve or so feet to the first floor (which is very hard vinyl).

Now that they're five months old, we decided to take the cardboard barrier down. No sooner had I taken it off when Sasha pokes his not-so-little head through the railing and tries to walk on the outside of the bottom of the railing: about two inches wide and open to the floor a long way below.

Maybe I'm an overprotective dad, but I pulled his furry butt back and just kind of sat and looked at him, wondering what to do. That's when he spied Nina down below, just coming out of the basement. Sasha, the lunatic, crept right up to the railing and was in the act of pouncing when I caught his fluffy tail!

So, I put the cardboard barrier back up. But then they wanted to climb it to get to the bannister railing. So I improvised a little barrier of duct tape - sticky side out - along the top of the cardboard barrier, and gently but insistently introduced them to it in hopes they wouldn't like it (which they didn't).

Am I overprotective? Can a young cat survive a fall like that (a good twelve feet)? Or is he just a crazy kitty? I thought cats would have enough survival instict to not do things like that; on the other hand, there's the old saying that "curiosity killed the cat." All I know is that I don't want Sasha or his sister to be an example of that!

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Normally I wouldn't be terribly interested in the history of the breed of one of our four-footed family members. But I found myself a bit intrigued about the Siberian cat's history because I learned to speak Russian while in college, spent a summer at Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) State University polishing my language skills and learning about the collective culture of the Soviet Union, and then during the last half of the 1980s played my own tiny role in the Cold War. And now we have two representatives of the national cat of the Russian Federated Republic in our house!

And after researching the web a bit, I've found that the history of the Siberian cat is typical of things Russian: as Winston Churchill once said, "It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

Choosing a pet, regardless of species, is a very important decision that you should never take lightly. You're essentially looking for a new child, a new member of the family that you get to choose (and if you don't see a new pet as a family member, I would discourage you from getting one for the animal's sake!). You'll be responsible for its care and feeding, giving it lots of love, and enjoying the fun times as well as dealing with the bad. And in return this animal will show you its own love as it develops its own unique personality and place in your life.

When considering a new cat - or even if you've never thought about owning a cat, but traditionally have been a dog lover - Siberian cats should be at the top of your list.

My wife, Jan, had cats growing up and loves cats. Unfortunately, her first husband made her get rid of them (hmm, the shape of things to come, as it turned out), and to top it all off her first child turned out to be highly allergic to cats and dogs, both. And that seemed to put the nail in the coffin for her having cats, at least until her first-born was grown and out of the nest.