I’m so stoked to have another adorable scruffy mutt, cute cat and their über talented blogger mommy as a guest today. I can’t even remember when I found Kristen’s blog Kristen F. Davis Designs but it’s been a long time ago. I just love her style and following her on Instagram. Lots of cute animal photos are always a plus of course.
She is also a very gifted painter. Furniture, canvas or walls! You name it, she does it! (Just check out the tabs at the top of her blog for examples)
Julia asked me to write a post for her “Living Pretty With Your Pets” posting series. I love my pets and I love Julia’s blog, so it was a no brainer. If you follow my Instagram account (@kristenfdavisdesigns), you might have had your fill of photos of my cat and dog, but just incase you don’t and haven’t, here we go… 🙂
I’ll first start with Mika, our cat. He’s a long haired Manx cat that we took in when Jordan’s sister needed to get him out of her house (she was worried about the toxins from cat litter affecting her pregnancy. I don’t think this is something people worry about anymore, but at the time it was a concern. Now they have safe cat litter! I’m glad we got him, nonetheless :))
Manx cats are born without tails and are, by nature, smaller than the average cat. I love Mika so much! We got him in 2009, so he’s lived with us for 5 years, and he’s about 6 years old. He’s always been pretty spunky. From climbing on top of the top kitchen cabinets and running laps, to running up and down our stairs at the condo, to trying to eat my hair, and chasing the laser light toy, he’s pretty active. It’s funny – sometimes we’ll be downstairs, and just hear crazy noises upstairs… it’s Mika, just running from the master bedroom to the guest bedroom… back and forth, back and forth. Getting his exercise.
He’s always in the mix, ready to see what we’re up to.
He’s always been my trusty assistant with all my design projects, too. No matter what the project is, he sits down on top of it to check it out and give it the sniff (and sometimes lick) test.
Also, always great at posing for the camera.
His favorite things are leafy green salads, licking Jordan’s leftover yogurt cups, and helping me prepare flower arrangements (taking the leaves in his mouth and displaying them throughout the house. Really nice.)
He even made it into the magazine when Jezebel magazine did a feature on our old condo!
A lot of my blog readers give me a hard time about posting less pictures of Mika these days, now that we have a dog, too, but Mika is still my first son! I do love that little cat.
We got Max, our terrier mutt from the Atlanta Humane Society back in December of 2013. They told us he was about a year old, and the veterinarian confirmed that when we took him in. He is full of spunk, personality, and sweetness. He’s a little freak, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
From the very first car ride, he has been full of love and energy.
This is probably the first photo I took of him (first of probably 1000 so far). Doesn’t it look like he’s smiling? This is on the way home from the Humane Society. Jordan and I were immediately in love with him. Jordan had found him on the Humane Society’s website (his name on there was “Woolworth”. Makes sense since he’s such a scraggly, wooly guy), and we both thought he was going to be a lot bigger, from the pictures. I thought he’d be a medium sized dog, but literally as soon as we walked into the HUGE building, they were taking some dogs for “walks” around the building, and he was the first dog we saw. We both said “oh my gosh , I think that’s Woolworth!” and asked the lady walking him. She said yes, and we asked if we could visit him. They put us in a glass room with just us and him, to give us some alone time, and he was jumping on us, licking our faces and sitting in our laps from the beginning. Jordan kept asking “Do you think we should? Is he the right dog? Should we meet some others?” and I just kept saying “let’s adopt him!”. We are both so happy that we adopted him – we laugh at him about 50 times a day, and both enjoy his company in our life. He’s really wild a lot of the time, and maybe not the best behaved dog, but I love his little personality.
Speaking of not well behaved, this is him on the table the other day (we got him a fresh haircut for the summer). Inappropriate (yet cute):
He even helps me work.
So nice of him to model for my blog pictures.
And sometimes, he doesn’t even have to model. He just woke up like this:
😉 Max-sleeping-pictures are some of my favorites. Why are they always so cute?
Some of my favorite times with him were right after we got him – it snowed. He loved it! Couldn’t get enough, and also was eating it. Blobs of snow stuck to his little beard. Haha.
He’s a real cutie.
An adjustment that we had to make is having both Max and Mika in the house. A “mature” cat and somewhat of still a puppy-dog make for an interesting mix. Mika is not interested in Max’s shenanigans, and they have really yet to become real friends. They do play sometimes, but Mika mainly enjoys to be Max-free 😉
A gamechanger was buying a baby gate. My friend had suggested it, and it was a perfect solution. I put the baby gate at the bottom of our stairs, and Mika is able to have the upstairs domain, and Max has the downstairs. It has worked wonders, and Mika is back to running laps in the house. I don’t always leave it up, but we do a lot of the time, and I like that it gives Mika some freedom from the wildness that is Max. At night, we all 4 hang out in the bedroom, and that makes me happy. Every now and then, this happens:
Harmony!
I hope you’ve enjoyed my pets post. Thanks, Julia, for having me!
I totally do think that Max is smiling on the way home from the Humane Society, don’t you think so? He is so stink in adorable, misbehaved and all. I do love a little dog with personality, too funny.
I’m also glad that Mika found a home with Kristen and her husband. We have a manx (who I love dearly and who is 19 years old now) too but ours can’t jump up anywhere and never had a lot of energy.
Now pay Kristen a visit by clicking HERE because like I said, she is amazingly talented. Check out the amazing bench she built from Target side tables. I love it so so much:
So good, right? Looks so high end.
And she sells some amazing paintings in her Etsy store as well (click HERE).
This one is not for sale 🙁 but I love it!
Hey and if you have some adorable pets living pretty with you at home then why don’t you hashtag them for all to see?
#livingprettywithyourpets
Have a great weekend my friends.
Tschüss,
(Youleeya)
7 Comments
love kristen and her amazing style- her pets are adorable as well! 🙂 and i love the story of getting max- he was totally meant to be theirs.
Thanks Julia for sharing Kristen and her husbands precious fur-angels. They are so darn cute and I am sure they would not take anything for them. I’m so glad they gave sweet little Max a wonderful home…he should never have been in a shelter but they are all full of wonderful dogs and cats that need wonderful homes.
love kristen and her amazing style- her pets are adorable as well! 🙂 and i love the story of getting max- he was totally meant to be theirs.
Every Friday I get the urge to add another pup to our house, especially after reading about cute little Max!
Aw, Max has the prettiest eyes! One of my dogs is from Atlanta Humane, too 🙂
Thanks Julia for sharing Kristen and her husbands precious fur-angels. They are so darn cute and I am sure they would not take anything for them. I’m so glad they gave sweet little Max a wonderful home…he should never have been in a shelter but they are all full of wonderful dogs and cats that need wonderful homes.
Now that is two, too cute little fur babies. Kristen has a beautiful home along with them.
So adorable! Love it!
Definitely one of my favorite bloggers! Love love love her style!