Albert
charmer, gentleman, glen of imaal terrier
CASSIOPEIA (Iltavilli Chione Cassiopeia)
Cassiopeia joined our family from the Iltavilli cattery (thank you so much for this wonderful cat, Päivi and Samu!!!!). I had always been a fan of the looks and history of the egyptian mau - THE original domestic cat - and when the chance came to acquire one I just jumped at it. The hope was that Cassi would also be good company for our lively terrorist Usva, but Usva had other plans and decided to hate Cassiopeia. I suppose the teasing and bickering gives them something to do, too, and luckily it's not at all serious.
Cassiopeia is to me the epiphany of what a cat truly is. She is stunningly beautiful and so healthy and functional in every aspect. She is incredibly agile, a tremendous hunter and has a wonderful temperament. She is very social, but not at all clingy or dependent. She is very trusting and friendly towards everyone, but not overly interested. Despite being lively, she's not in any way annoying or irritating. She has a heartwarmingly special relationship with Albert, they are just the best of friends. Cassi clearly views Albert as a motherly figure, purring and headbutting Albert all the time and even "suckles" on a regular basis, despite having long grown out of baby-mode with us humans!
A strange anecdote is Cassiopeia's liking of water. She just doesn't mind it at all, and will often climb into the baby's bath once he's finished, spending ages just wading in the water. She loves playing with our baby's bath toys, and gets especially excited if we toss a cotton bud into the water.
Cassiopeia is a complete carnivore. Dried kibble gets the same reception as a bowl of chopped up cardboard would. She just doesn't accept it's food, and never has, despite being systematically offered it from weaning and despite her siblings having no issues with it. Her favourite meal is an entire raw chicken wing, and she can demolish one quickly bones, skin, gristle and all. She's also fed raw pork and cooked fish, both of which she adores. Cassiopeia also accepts some commercial foods with a high meat content, but isn't too excited about them at all. She's also the only one of our cats that actually eats the mice she catches from our outdoor enclosure, leaving only the tiny gallbladder uneaten (I've no idea how she manages to separate it from the rest of the mouse!). In fact once when she was fed up with the canned food I'd offered days in a row when we were out of all else, she sniffed at her plate, disapproved, and went out into the cats' enclosure. I remember being surprised, as it was raining outside and usually our cats prefer being indoors when it rains. The motivation behind facing the adverse weather became clear when she jumped back onto the windowsill with an extremely plump vole in her mouth, which she proceeded to quickly devour behind the washing machine. Admirable self-sufficiency, one might say :) 
MYRSKY (Maplehill's Creole Diamond)
Our only male cat (neutered, though) and the king of the household. An absolutely beautiful bicolor boy bred by Anne Röntynen of Maplehill's catteries. A true ragdoll in many ways, any member of our family can tie him in a knot if we want to, but I'm proud to say that he isn't as lazy as many ragdolls I've met, but instead has a good deal of cat about him, too. He's incredibly heavy and quite muscular as he really tries his best to keep up with the shorthaired girls. He's even caught a mouse, but mainly he concentrates on bringing in more ragdoll-appropriate prey such as worms and frogs.
Myrsky is very friendly, and often becomes the favourite of people visiting us because of his lapcat-ways and magnificent looks. Myrsky is a bit of a mummy's boy, and I readily admit to spoiling him rotten. Myrsky has been particularly wonderful with our baby, and seems to have no instinct of self-preservation whatsoever. He always arranges himself right next to the baby and purrs away as the baby pulls fistfuls of hair out of him, grabs his ears and tries to taste him, with no intention whatsoever of moving. We always intervene to rescue him, but he comes right back. A truly wonderful boy, and I reckon he would have a good deal of show potential, too, if we were more interested. The aim is to take him to a show in the autumn, hopefully we'll get around to it and it will be interesting to see how he does.
USVA (Melodian Mai Yeun Dtun)
I'm in the habit of saying that we have three cats and a korat. Usva is just something else entirely. She has the potential of being the most infuriating, noisy, mercury-like hyperactive lunatic, but on the other hand at her best she is just an incredible creature and the loveliest cat. There is a depth of character and understanding about her that is unmatched by any other cat I have met. Usva is highly intelligent, highly dominant, highly social, highly loving, highly demanding, highly active, highly talkative, highly adorable and highly annoying. There's no middle ground, this girl represents the extremes of life. Just when I'm about to completely lose it with her and the thought of releasing her into the wild seems increasingly tempting by the minute, she will carefully arrange herself in my lap, look into my eyes in the most penetrating way and let out a single meow as if to say she was only joking.
Usva is the only one of our cats who, in addition to having continuous access to the outdoor enclosure, also gets to come out on a leash with us from time to time. This she greatly enjoys and is always on her best behaviour. She seems highly aware that this is a special privilege of hers and appears to get great satisfaction from seeing the other three stuck in the enclosure watching her have her walkabout.
Despite being quite challenging with adults (she's very dominant and if she's not in the mood she won't let strangers touch her), she's an absolute angel with all children, whether they want to pet her, pick her up or play with her. She has an excellent ability to recognise the most inconvenient times to wreak havoc, and will generally burst into loud and demanding conversation when the baby is just about drifting off to sleep or when I have an important phone call, and she usually decides to attempt a courageous adventure into the wild by escaping through my legs when I'm just leaving in a terrible rush to get to somewhere I really have to be. Usva seems to think that by far the best time to go catapulting around the place like a headless chicken with ADHD is if we have visitors who aren't that sure of cats to begin with, and a great entertainment number during a birthday party or similar family gathering is to drop a large, fragile and preferably messy object off a shelf, such as a large potted plant. Usva, like most children, has noticed that if one cannot get attention by positive means, one can always resort to the negative, and often if I'm too busy to react to her verbal pleas of attention, she will go and sit on the stove (a no-go area), knock over a vase or melodramatically tease Cassiopeia.
Sanna of Melodian catteries warned me that this is what I'd be up against, but have to admit I didn't quite believe her looking at the cute silvery little thing that wanted to sit on my shoulder. Thank you Sanna for making our lives more interesting ;)
INDI (Doodlebug Didi)
Indi is an overly cute ball of fur. Everything about her is round and fluffy and adorable. Don't let the looks fool you, she is the undoubted queen of the pack, and even manages to keep Usva in check.
Indi is a very traditional cat in her temperament. Slightly shy, very independent and quite a princess. She's extremely fussy with her food and her worst nightmare would be to get her paws wet. Just as Myrsky is a mummy's boy, Indi is most definitely Daddy's little girl, and clearly a bit of a one man's cat. Indi is friendly, but not particularly sociable, though she's definitely come out of her shell much more after we got our hyper-social younger cats.
Indi is a beautiful blue tabby point, but her white socks are (I hear) somehow wrong, so there's no point taking her to beauty contests. I doubt she'd think much of it anyway, so it's just as well I don't have to think about it.
Indi was devastated by the loss of Eddie, though Myrsky has in some ways managed to compensate her loss, and Indi and Myrsky are very close friends. I was tremendously grieved to hear that Indi's breeder Ritva Mäkilä of Doodlebug catteries passed away late in 2008. I really hope she knew how appreciated Indi and other Doodlebug birmans are.
