What's your sign? Koshka or kot?

This is a cat that hangs out in the stairwell of my apartment building. Like Napster, my cat back in Richmond, this one prefers to be outside: It crawled through a broken window and is sitting on a ledge, exposed to the cold. (No, I did not chase it there!)

In Russian, a female cat is a koshka; a male is a kot. I'm not sure whether this one is a koshka or a kot.

Speaking of my apartment building: When you enter from the street and get into the stairwell, there are stairs that go down one level -- and stairs that go up several floors (four, I think; I'm on the third floor).

There's one apartment on the basement level. It's always dark or dimly lit down there. But the other day, the light was on enough for me to make out a sign. I like to sound out the Russian. It's like a word: You painstakingly get your mouth around the sound of each letter, only to realize that it's a word you know -- like progress [прогресс: the п is a P sound; the р is an R; the г is a hard G; the с is an S], or macaroni [макароны: the н is an N sound].

Here's what the sign outside the basement apartment says:



Did you figure out the translation? It's a School of Astrology!

Ш = sh
к = k
о = o
л = l
а = a

(So, "shkola" or school.)

а = a
с = s
т = t
р = r
о = o
л = l
о = o
г = g
и = ee
и = ee

(So, "astrologeeee")