summer house, pt.3.

These are the photos from a different day, when my mother and I came over to settle some remaining matters with gas and electricity debts.  This is the last time I’ve seen the house.  There are no actual photographs in it here.  I concentrated on flowers and neighbouring properties this time around.

Also, cat.

Building castles where there shouldn’t be any.

OK, this photo?  I was trying to photograph a bird in flight.  Not exactly successful.  That oddly shaped blob in top left corner, that’s your bird.  In flight.

And in this one I’m photographing a resting bird.  That little spot to the left of the roof ornament.  There it is.  You’ll probably have to zoom in.

On our way back my mum and I picked up a lady and what looked like her granddaughter, quite by mistake too.

Let me relay the tale to you.

There was a bunch of people signaling for rides on an intersection.  On that intersection my mum and I decided to stop and think which route we’d like to take.  The lady mistook our stop as a reply to her signal.  She rushed to the car, opened the door, asking if we’re going to Kish.  Mother was dumbstruck, and the logical direct dumb me answered, "… yes".  They jumped in by the time we realised what happened.

It was odd.

She gave us a dollar when it was her and her kid companion’s time to get off.

We didn’t take it.

End.

 

(This post originally appeared on my old blog on 14 October 2011.)

summer house, pt. 2, mostly clouds.

This is my grandfather’s friends’ kitten.

(This post originally appeared on my old blog on 13 October 2011.)

loneliness.

Back when Musya and I were the sole occupants of this flat, she would often have epic encounters with the pigeon I fed on the outside of my kitchen window.  Below is a series of photographs taken in November 2006.

And when I’d be busy with something and the pigeon wouldn’t come, Musya would get lonely and patiently sit on the windowsill, waiting for the pigeon’s arrival.

I love my kitties.  I haven’t moved yet, but I already miss them.

 

(This was originally posted on my old personal blog on 01 March 2010.)

on cats and lavender.

Yesterday Jolie, one of the kitties we spayed, disappeared. 

We let her and Dusya out of carriages.  I saw Jolie go to the smaller kitchen, and thought she was going to her favourite chair to sleep and recuperate.  I didn’t follow her.

An hour later I decided to check on her and Dusya.  Dusya was sleeping, face down, exactly where I put her, in the exact same position.  Jolie was not in the kitchen.  I thought she moved, so I checked several other places.  She wasn’t there.

As she was still under anaesthesia, there was limited amount of space she could hide, and my brother and I searched them all.  The balcony door was open to let some fresh air in, and I feared that she fell over, so I went outside late at night with a torch and looked for possible hiding places in the vicinity of our home.  There were no visible signs of falling outside, though.  As her stiches were basically only a few hours old, there’d be blood, and lots of it, if she did fall from the third floor.

I went to bed in tears, but slept a lot, possibly from exhaustion of the previous day.

I woke up in a melancholy mood, looked through all possible hiding places again, looked from both balconies.  She was nowhere to be found.

I printed an advert, using the photo above, and was waiting for my brother to come back home so I could go outside and post it in a one-two block radius from our home.

I went to clean the smaller kitchen and corridor.  I was sweeping the floor, calling out for Jolie, in hopes that she was still hiding somewhere, and weeping.  I cleaned out litter boxes, texted brother and cousin, went to help my mum, then returned to the smaller kitchen.

I could smell lavender.

We keep yesteryear’s dry lavender under the sink in the smaller kitchen.

Now, the thing with lavender when it’s dry, you can’t smell it unless you disturb it or warm it.

I rushed to the sink and looked under it.

There was Jolie, sleeping, with her back turned to me, on the lavender tote-bag.  I picked her up, which displeased her slightly, and took her to my room and put her on the sofa.

Yesterday I looked under the sink at least five times.  Today I looked under the sink again, at least five times, too.

She must’ve teleported somewhere only cats could go and then come back.  This is the only explanation I have.

I’m glad I’ve wasted 30 sheets of paper.

tucked.

Whenever you look and wherever you look, there’d be a cat tucked in here somewhere.  I suppose to appreciate this you have to be a real cat person, especially when you come into the kitchen and realise that desk, counters, windowsill and all three chairs are occupied by these fiends, so the only place for you to sit is either on top of the fridge or on the floor.

Nevertheless, whenever I’m feeling stressed, all I have to do is wander out of my room to a more densely populated area, find a place to sit down, and watch them.

Lus was sitting in my lap as I was taking these photographs.

(This post was originally published on my old and obscure blog on 14 Jan 2012.)

irons and washers and breakers, oh my.

After two hours of work, I’m done with a pile of laundry that waited to be ironed.  I’d bask in the glory of it all, however the next pile has already started, well, piling up.  So I’ll skip the basking for now.  And the dirty laundry basket is half-empty now (which seems a more optimistic interpretation than half-full in this particular case, don’t you think?), but there are also three huge plastic bags full of linen and cat sheets.  Cat sheets are a special type of linen.  Read: old bedclothes adapted to cat use.  They are placed on cat chairs.  Which are — yeah, old chairs adapted to cat use.

There are a lot of things in this house adapted to cat use.  Sometimes willingly, sometimes not so much.

But back to laundry!  I’m writing this post in the wee hours of Saturday, and since Sunday is usually bedclothes change day, it means that my glorious half-empty laundry basket will be full again — probably with an additional bag or two.  The situation is exacerbated by weather.  It’s very hot outside, yes.  This usually means that one or two loads of laundry will be dry (we line-dry on the balcony) before I finish another two loads.  But since my mother can’t take the heat, I keep the AC going.  If I turn the washer on, it overloads the electrical system, and I have to run downstairs to switch the circuit breakers back on.

It’s all very exciting.

… I think I’m going to postpone changing (at least) my bedclothes for another week.  Ahem.

poem: the naming of cats.

I’m not big on poetry, but I’m an avid cat lady (there are seven of them in this household), so this particular poem by T.S. Eliot struck a chord.

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey–
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter–
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover–
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

jolie jolie.

One of my cats is actually a dog.

She’s so small here. This one was taken more than a year ago. I should upload some newer photos of kitties.