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God, it's hot. Today is a bit better, because we finally, *finally* had a storm and rain yesterday afternoon/evening, so the night was wonderfully cool, but the temperatures will be climbing well into the thirties again today, and yesterday before the storm was simply awful.
Usually I take the garbage down to the containers in the morning and just leave it outside my door during the evening and night, but given the temperatures that's hardly feasible -- nobody likes the combined smell of cat excrement and old fish wafting through the corridor. So I went down in the afternoon, maybe 20 minutes before the storm broke, and it was like standing next to a just-landed airplane. Breathing was hardly possible, and once I breathed, it wasn't really a pleasant experience. But I'd taken a bottle of water to refill the street cats' water bowl, and also the discarded bits of fish remaining from the salad I'd prepared for dinner, and so I got at least to watch the cats gorging themselves, and some of the new kittens tentatively trying to eat some fish. I think I could spend hours just looking at kittens, whatever they're doing. Their eye colour is just turning from blue to whatever it's going to be, and they're fluffy, healthy (as far as I can judge by sight) and simply adorable.
I also realized that there are two females with swollen teats, so I suppose the five kittens belong to and are being raised by both of them. Since the mothers are quite young, about a year old, and rather on the dainty side, a litter of five would have been quite big for a first time, anyway. It also makes sense colour-wise: both mothers are tabbies, as are three of the kittens, and two of them are white-black and white-tabby respectively, so I think one of the fathers is the black-and-white tom, and the other is one of the three tabby toms.
It's funny, really, how animal care is conducive to chatting with other people, provided they don't disapprove, which is more conducive to arguments. There's an elderly lady living in my building, and she takes her grandson out in the stroller at the same time I feed the cats -- it's the only time of day cool enough to venture out with a baby. So I'm having a morning chat with her most days, and yesterday morning a group of Turkish tourists was just leaving the hotel on the ground floor of my building, and one of the women (also elderly) came to chat and tell me that surely God would bless me for taking care of the street cats. She was very sweet and told me about her street cats in Istanbul.
Not much has been accomplished during the weekend, but at least I did sports and household chores; with Slavica on holiday and three cats shedding like mad because of the heat, I really have to keep on top of household work. If I do something every day it's not too hard, though.
Also yesterday I prepared a delicious dinner: a salad made with tomato, raw courgette cubes (tastier and more easily digestible than cucumbers), basil, coriander, capers, lettuce, smoked salmon, prawns and some fish I'd bought already cooked at the supermarket (no idea what it was, but it was good). Dressing made of mustard, lime juice, chilli powder, a bit of white wine, olive oil and salt. Since we ate it without bread I made a nice dessert -- iced coffee not-quite-Viennese style. The way they make it in Austria isn't to my taste at all, because it's always too sweet. They sweeten the coffee, they sweeten the whipped cream, and the vanilla ice cream is sweet, too. Yuck. So I used unsweetened, decaf espresso, unsweetened whipped cream, and the vanilla ice cream wasn't overly sweet, either. Result: yummy.
I'm really quite lucky with my metabolism that allows me to pig out on proteins without regretting it. It pays me back with immediate weight gain if I dare eat even small quantities of starch and protein together, but, hey, that's avoidable. Well, mostly.
Monday continues to underwhelm me...
Usually I take the garbage down to the containers in the morning and just leave it outside my door during the evening and night, but given the temperatures that's hardly feasible -- nobody likes the combined smell of cat excrement and old fish wafting through the corridor. So I went down in the afternoon, maybe 20 minutes before the storm broke, and it was like standing next to a just-landed airplane. Breathing was hardly possible, and once I breathed, it wasn't really a pleasant experience. But I'd taken a bottle of water to refill the street cats' water bowl, and also the discarded bits of fish remaining from the salad I'd prepared for dinner, and so I got at least to watch the cats gorging themselves, and some of the new kittens tentatively trying to eat some fish. I think I could spend hours just looking at kittens, whatever they're doing. Their eye colour is just turning from blue to whatever it's going to be, and they're fluffy, healthy (as far as I can judge by sight) and simply adorable.
I also realized that there are two females with swollen teats, so I suppose the five kittens belong to and are being raised by both of them. Since the mothers are quite young, about a year old, and rather on the dainty side, a litter of five would have been quite big for a first time, anyway. It also makes sense colour-wise: both mothers are tabbies, as are three of the kittens, and two of them are white-black and white-tabby respectively, so I think one of the fathers is the black-and-white tom, and the other is one of the three tabby toms.
It's funny, really, how animal care is conducive to chatting with other people, provided they don't disapprove, which is more conducive to arguments. There's an elderly lady living in my building, and she takes her grandson out in the stroller at the same time I feed the cats -- it's the only time of day cool enough to venture out with a baby. So I'm having a morning chat with her most days, and yesterday morning a group of Turkish tourists was just leaving the hotel on the ground floor of my building, and one of the women (also elderly) came to chat and tell me that surely God would bless me for taking care of the street cats. She was very sweet and told me about her street cats in Istanbul.
Not much has been accomplished during the weekend, but at least I did sports and household chores; with Slavica on holiday and three cats shedding like mad because of the heat, I really have to keep on top of household work. If I do something every day it's not too hard, though.
Also yesterday I prepared a delicious dinner: a salad made with tomato, raw courgette cubes (tastier and more easily digestible than cucumbers), basil, coriander, capers, lettuce, smoked salmon, prawns and some fish I'd bought already cooked at the supermarket (no idea what it was, but it was good). Dressing made of mustard, lime juice, chilli powder, a bit of white wine, olive oil and salt. Since we ate it without bread I made a nice dessert -- iced coffee not-quite-Viennese style. The way they make it in Austria isn't to my taste at all, because it's always too sweet. They sweeten the coffee, they sweeten the whipped cream, and the vanilla ice cream is sweet, too. Yuck. So I used unsweetened, decaf espresso, unsweetened whipped cream, and the vanilla ice cream wasn't overly sweet, either. Result: yummy.
I'm really quite lucky with my metabolism that allows me to pig out on proteins without regretting it. It pays me back with immediate weight gain if I dare eat even small quantities of starch and protein together, but, hey, that's avoidable. Well, mostly.
Monday continues to underwhelm me...
