As the year nears its end, it's time to look back at some of the main events in Jeziorki. Domestically, the presence of new cats has done the most to change the way things are. Lila, the stray kitten that Moni brought home from Łódź gave birth to four kittens in May. Sadly, Bonus the Runt died ten days later, but the surviving trio, Czester (orange tom), Feluś (his black-and-white brother, half an hour younger) and Izadora (their black-and-white sister with some tortoiseshell markings) would go on to thrive. Czester is the one we kept; Feluś lives in a flat in central Warsaw, Izadora lives on a farm near Grodzisk Mazowiecki, where she's a champion mouse-catcher.
Anyway, here are the three kittens playing football with a bottle-top on the kitchen floor, aged two months. Lots of fun and feline action. Proof that chasing an object to see who can control it is not just a human instinct; all mammals want to show who's at the head of the pecking order, who's the top dog (or indeed cat). I think this display infinitely more fascinating than watching 22 highly paid men doing something very similar... (Click to watch full-screen, four minutes of fun)
One side-effect of seeing the kittens being born and growing up is that I've started looking at humans in cat terms - seeing mankind as yet another mammalian species - albeit a highly advanced one, yet a species that has much in common with other mammals.
This time last year:
The drainage of Jeziorki
This time two years ago:
The Eurocrisis - what would Jesus do?
This time three years ago:
Orders of magnitude
This time four years ago:
Jeziorki in the snow
This time five years ago:
Better news on the commuting front
This time six years ago:
I no longer recognise the land where I was born
All I can say is that I want to come back as a cat in the next incarnation. Of course in a good home with a roaring fire in the winter and food on tap all year round. Żyć nie umierać judging my two moggies. When Minia (a Norwegian forest cat) gace birth she managed to convince Oskar - all 5 kilo of greater Swiss mountain dog - that he was the father! The sight of a dog herding kittens back into their cat basket was certainly a treat.
ReplyDeletePS that's 55 kilo and not 5
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