Me and Zilli...

Hi everyone,

First, I would like to thank everyone who has visited my blog! My mom told me that she is happy with the attention I am getting and she said with time, more and more people will be visiting me - hopefully. It makes me feel good as I am a bit of a "ham" and do love getting lots of attention!

That's another thing with Maltese Terriers... we love attention! The more the better! I can't talk for all Maltese terriers, but I am very very friendly and rarely bark!

I know my mom is happy that I am not a barker, but I'm not so sure how she feels about my extra "friendly" side!

It is true to I warm up to everyone - people, cats, dogs, birds... very easily - whether they want the attention or not! Surprisingly, there are people out there who are frightened of me and flinch and ask silly questions like "does he bite?" when it is very obvious that I am a spirited little guy who loves to just jump on people to show them my affection!

In my first post, I had mentioned that I have other "doggie" friends in the neighborhood and my "best" girl is Zilli! Zilli is a slang word and roughly translated into english means "smart ass", but in an affectionate way! Zilli is 7 years old and I found out today that she was born on October 26th and she is a mixed breed terrier.

Zilli lives in my apartment building and we met about a couple of days after I moved in with mom and immediately fell in love! She, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with me and barked and growled when I approached her! But, things have changed quite a bit since then and now we are much more friendly and luckily - she is happy to see me!

But, she is a girl and from time to time, still acts coy and gives me the cold shoulder... then, I just sit in front of her and try to appease her!

This normally works and she changes her tune and we take our walks together, but from time to time... she does throw me a look!

However, another problem we have is that we don't get a chance to see each other as often as we'd like and it is my fault!

You see... I am an early riser - which drives my mom crazy! I get up at about 7:00am every morning and I expect her to get up too - even if she went to sleep very late the night before! And... I'm adamant about it and literally force her to get up!

I do this by jumping on her bed and do everything in my power to get her to wake up! She gets really annoyed with me and tells me to get off the bed and "assists" me gently by putting me on the floor! I bet she is going to be really happy when I grow up more and patiently wait for her to get up! But, then again, she doesn't like to sleep too much anyway!

But, for the last few days, I've given mom "permission" to sleep until about 8:00am, so we have been taking our morning walks closer to 9:00am - the time that Zilli goes for her walk! I think I get it now... if I want to see Zilli, I have to go outside according to her terms! I guess the "dog" world is no different than the people world... females are the real rulers!!!

You know... now that I think of it... Zilli and I are very fortunate... we live in loving homes with families that really and truly care about us.

As I mentioned in my first post... there are many stray dogs and cats living on the streets in Istanbul and all over Turkey, but I can only talk about Istanbul. I think its all of our responsibility to take care of our friends - but it is a tall order and major job. Most importantly, the least we can do is to give them so food, water and not treat them badly. All they want is attention and to live in peace - but they do have a rough life and I guess that is why some can be scary and violent - they are trying to survive!

Below are photos of some of my "cat" friends at my housing complex... there are many many more! These two cats might look like the same - but they are not... but, obviously they are siblings!

Mom feeds them from time to time by giving them my scraps and cat food she buys for them ... and during the summer, she made sure to put out bowls of water. She also feeds the stray dogs in our neighborhood with dry dog food... every little bit helps!

Till the next time....

Luka