Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

The Amur leopard was very handsome and picturesque during my last visit to the zoo - handsome in that mysterious and dangerous way. His eyes were positively mesmorizing. I took many many photographs of his eyes and face. And I spent several minutes just staring into the intelligent depths of his beautiful green eyes. The glory of an empty zoo is that there’s no one else scaring the animals away. The Amur leopard is a cold weather cat as well which contributed to his mellow availability. He was even very tolerant of the flash. What struck me was how small he really is. He’s a lean and compact little cat - not as tall, long and lanky as the cheetahs.

While I won’t go as far as to call him friendly, he was quite content to sit there staring at me. I love the cute-face look in the first image below. He maintains his feline dignity yet still melts my heart. And those paws are just amazing.

Happy Friday, by the way! I am finishing up a great work week the likes of which I haven’t had in a while. My last project was huge and scary and chaotic so my weeks were often this productive but it was always reactive productivity. This week - proactive all the way, baby. This must be what it feels like to love your job and not be in fire-fighting mode! Talk about exciting! Oh plus, I got happy feedback from one of the big bosses today regarding my work on the new project. Not only am I having fun and enjoying the work but apparently doing a good enough job that people are noticing! It’s pretty cool to get praise out of the blue for something I’m already pretty happy about.

In other exciting (to me) news, it’s staying cold down here. The snow is staying put! It might really be winter after all! The Fop has mostly recovered from being sick and I have apparently avoided getting sick this round. Hurray! There was much excitement (where excitement = loud complaining) about how cold it was last night when he went to take out the trash. Well, it was 16° F out so I guess it wasn’t completely unwarranted but the silly Fop didn’t actually put on a coat either. Today the outside temp is hovering around 20-25° and there’s snow in the forecast for Sunday! Well, in one of the forecasts. Yahoo Weather does not concur with the weather forecast provided by my weather widget.

tags: amur leopard, leopard, philadelphia zoo, snow, weather, work, zoo