Question of the day.

   You’ve been given the ability to speak to one type of animal for the rest of your life, which one do you choose and why? 

   My answer: 

   Practically, I would choose cats, because I have a cat, and I’ve always wanted to know what Misha is thinking or feeling, and it has always low-key frustrated me that I can only try my best to guess if he likes or dislikes something or if something hurts him etc. Sighted people have the eye contact and gestures, but when you don’t have even that to rely on, it’s even more of a guessing game, especially that Misha isn’t overly vocal. So, if I were able to speak to him in his language, I assume I would understand him as well. That would be very helpful and comfortable. Speaking to him feels a lot less important than understanding him, but it could be useful too. I often wonder if he actually understands our human gestures, like hugging or kissing him, as manifestations of affection for him, and if he understands just how important he is to me and how much I like to sleep with him, that it’s not just like a part of my routine or something. Similarly, I don’t think he understands the concept of something simply not being there when it used to, despite he wants it to be there, so it would be neat if I could explain it to him in his language. I could tell him that, no, I’m really not making fun of you or trying to be mean to you, everything comes to end, and that’s what just happened to your treats, there’s no spare box of them that’s going to appear magically out of nowhere, someone will have to pop to the shop tomorrow, but right now it’s midnight and all the shops are closed, so you’re out of treats. Or I could try to alleviate his fears, like explain to him that vacuum cleaners really have no bad intentions towards him or that the world doesn’t revolve around him so that if someone turns towards him or touches him by accident, it doesn’t automatically mean they’re trying to harm him, or that they’re even thinking about him at all. 

   However, as much as it would be practical and as much as I love Misha, there’s one species of animals that I think would be far more interesting to talk to, assuming, like I said, that you could also understand their answers. Those animals are horses. I think horses are such insanely wise animals, and I’ve always been fascinated by how complex personalities they can have. Cats definitely have their own personalities too, but they don’t differ between each other quite as much as horses do, and they’re rarely so multi-dimensional as horses seem to. And horses are really good observers. Well not all of them I suppose but many of those that I’ve come across seem to be. For example, I am quite good at bottling stuff up and am rather emotionally inhibited on the outside, but Czardasz aka Łoś – the first horse that I used to ride and with whom I had a really strong bond until he died – would always immediately pick up on when I was anxious or not and would act differently, and whenever I was sad, he was always unusually affectionate and clingy with me. He was also insanely good at estimating his rider’s physical capabilities. Somehow he always knew that this kid has very spastic cerebral palsy and is currently putting all the effort she can into riding, but this one is actually slacking and can do more than he’s doing with his better leg, so let’s make him use his muscles properly. And he was always extremely patient with people with all sorts of behavioural difficulties like neurodevelopmental disabilities. So while I unfortunately wouldn’t be able to talk to Łoś, I’d still like to talk to other horses about what they think and how they perceive people etc. 

   What would you choose? 🙂 

Question of the day.

   Do you ever see wild animals? 

   My answer: 

   Well, given the fact that I’m blind, I don’t really get to see or be in any kind of contact with wild animals a lot. That being said though, I grew up in the countryside, having a forest on the other side of our gate, and now live in a place which perhaps is part of a town, strictly speaking, but feels a lot more like a village, so I still do see wild animals sometimes. We are often visited by all kinds of wild, stray cats from the whole area. Now that Jocky is around it happens a lot less and they’re a lot less brave around here, but when we first moved in here they would often move around our backyard very care-freely, not caring about my Dad’s attempts at scaring them away. Our place is also very well-liked by various birds, from kingfishers and blackbirds to magpies and seagulls (the latter two are Jocky’s worst enemies as they keep stealing his food when he’s asleep or on the other side of the backyard, and they’re nasty to Misha too ‘cause they like to drive him up the wall with their noise and he can’t even retaliate because he’s closed in here, and when he manages to escape they often scare him and seem like they’re laughing at him. We are also very often visited by hedgehogs, which is super cool because we all really like hedgehogs, they’re so cute. I got to feel a hedgehog quite a few times. Unfortunately, Jocky can be very nasty to them and has killed a few. 

   Just the other day, a blackbird hit our terrace window while my parents and their friends were having a little party. My Dad took care of it right away and wanted to call the rescue people, but the bird sadly died in the meantime. And then my Dad brought it to show it to me. Honestly, at first I had no idea what he was showing me and I got a total brainfuck for a few seconds. I had a quick feel of a small, silky, shapely, oddly limp head and immediately got chills, ‘cause some little part of my brain thought that my Dad was holding a little piece of Misha and I thought something happened to him, like that he must have gotten out while they were out and had some sort of gory accident or something. That was just a really really brief moment, I didn’t even manage to form that thought properly, but I already thought like I was going to get a heart attack, in my mind this limp little bird looked so much as if it was a little piece of Misha’s body. Only after a little while I realised that Misha is actually tucked away safely in my own wardrobe, and when I looked more closely I finally knew that it was feathers rather than fur and figured out what happened. It looked so sad and pitiful, but so cute as if it was sleeping. My Dad has a particular love for such little wild creatures, which perhaps may seem strange for some who know him but he really does, so he was quite depressed and no longer into partying so after that he promptly went to bed. So yeah, technically I saw a wild animal fairly recently, but for practical reasons I don’t have such opportunities very often. 

   Oh, and another fairly recent situation that I obviously didn’t see directly, but was present when it happened, was that one day when we were driving back home from church, Mum saw a whole flock of boars crossing through the road. Good thing that no one was driving through that particular place at the time, but it must have looked quite absurd. 

   Oh, and now I’m reminded of yet another thing. When Sofi was just a month old, we were also on a way somewhere, and my Dad spotted a female deer that must have been lost I guess or something else was wrong with her, so he stopped and just picked her up without much thinking I guess and brought her into the car. I’m not sure really what he wanted to achieve, guess show her to Mum or something. Mum was really afraid though that the deer might spread some bacteria or whatever and could infect Sofi, and she felt for her just being picked up abruptly like that, it must have been scary for her. I didn’t get to touch her or anything of course, but I heard her shrieking really loudly, probably in confirmation of my Mum’s words, so Dad quickly took her back from where he picked her from. I remember really feeling for her because that shriek of hers really sounded like she was very scared.

   How about you? 🙂 

Song of the day (29th January) – Cherish The Ladies – “The Ballad of the Foxhunter” & Loreena McKennitt – “The Ballad of the Foxhunter”.

   Hey people! 🙂 

   This time, I thought I’d share withh you two musical arrangements of the same poem, one written by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The first of these two arrangements is by the Irish-American Celtic music female group called Cherish the Ladies, which came to life thanks to Mick Moloney, as a way to counteract the fact that the American Celtic music scene was highly male-dominated at the time, and led by flautist Joanie Madden. I’ve been familiar with their music, and this song, for years. The second version is by the Canadian multi-talented musician Loreena McKennitt from her album Lost Souls, whose multiple songs I’ve already featured in this series. She has released a series  called In Her own Words, in which she explains the origins and inspiration of every song on the album that a given installment covers. Loreena quite clearly has a strong bond with nature, and, as she says herself, has always had pets, and wanted to be a vet at some point in her life. Therefore it’s not surprising that she’s felt drawn to this poem and how it shows the connection between humans and animals, specifically dogs. 

   My Misha’s not a dog, but he’s still an animal and we do have a very strong connection and can often sense each other’s state of mind to a varying degree or so it seems. I originally wanted to post this yesterday, on the eve of Misha’s birthday but was unable to in the end, but it’s even more fitting on this very day instead. 

   While I like both of these arrangements a lot and each has its own advantages, I think I slightly prefer the Cherish The Ladies version. As a bit of a fun fact, I donn’t know if the melody to which their version is set is something they came up with or sung it to this melody first or if more people have used the same melody, but the Irish traditional song 

Nead na lachan

is set to the same tune. 

   Cherish the Ladies: 

 

   Loreena McKennitt: 

 

Question of the day.

What’s the coolest thing you own?

My answer:

Well, I own a lot of things that I guess people could consider cool either because they’re beautiful, or interesting, or even because it’s something they’ve never seen before like some of my gem stones or the more niche tech equipment for example, , but for me personally, it’s Misha who’s the coolest. Misha’s not really a thing, is he, but I do own him, officially anyway, as weird as that sounds, so I think he counts and I don’t own anything that would be cooler than Misha.

How about you? 🙂

Asynje – “Hugormen” (The Vipera Berus).

Hey people! 🙂

I’ve shared a song by a Danish singer with you yesterday, and today we have a Danish band. Asynje is closely associated with another highly successful Danish (and Faroese) folk band called Valravn. Their name, as far as I’m aware, means a female As in Old Norse, with As (plural Asir) being the Old Norse word for god.

The title of this song – “Hugormen” – is the Danish word for a type of snake which is apparently called the vipera berus in English. The Scandinavian name roughly means the striking snake. I haven’t found any translation of the lyrics, but looking at them and trying to deduce things by myself, what I do know is that the lyrical subject is addressing this snake, and I’m pretty sure she’s asking it for something, and my best guess is that she’s asking it not to harm (to “preserve” literally) her and her species, or perhaps her offspring, so then she’ll preserve its species/offspring too. Quite an interesting alliance. As in a lot of Nordic folk, here you can also hear the vocalist (Nanna Barslev) use a vocal technique called kulning, which was, and perhaps still is, used by shepherdesses to call their flocks, or communicate with each other from a longer distances. It literally means cow calling. I guess I’ve never ever shared any music where kulning would be used, and I really like it, hence I’m mentioning it now.

Question of the day (18th June).

If animals could talk, which one would be the most annoying?

My answer:

I guess something like parrots and other animals which are talkative anyways, they’d probably have even more to say if they’d be able to talk like humans very well, but I somehow doubt they’d have a lot of interesting or original things to say. Otherwise ducks, geese and the like, all those animals who are really noisy and not particularly pleasant-sounding. Or the small dog breeds, who, again, often make a lot of noise which is often already annoying even though they don’t speak human.

I always want Misha to be able to talk, even at least for five minutes so I can ask him if he’s happy or if there’s something he really wants that is realistically doable or if there’s anything he’d like me to know, but my Mum claims he’d be super annoying if he could talk, and just as now he’s very non-vocal, if he could talk he’d probably wouldn’t shut up for a minute. I don’t really see why his personality would be supposed to change at the same time as well. Still, perhaps it would be annoying regardless how much he’d talk, because Mum also says that in her opinion he’d only talk about food and how hungry he is or that he wants out, which is more realistic than the personality change because that’s already more or less everything he talks about when he does make any sounds, and it can get old.

What do you think? 🙂

Question of the day.

Do you prefer dogs or cats?

My answer:

I guess my answer’s going to be quite obvious for most of my followers, if not all of them. Yes, I prefer cats. I feel a lot more in common with them and I feel I can understand them better than dogs and interacting with them is a lot easier. That’s not to say that I don’t like dogs though. I absolutely do. We have Jocky, after all, and when I grew up we always had some dog, or more than one sometimes, which was not the case with cats. Well, okay, we had a lot of them running in the backyard, but only had one indoor cat before Misha for a while, with whom I didn’t have much of a connection because, a lot like Misha, he was more on the aloof side, and since I spent most of the time at the boarding school, naturally he didn’t have enough time to get to know me, nor did I know him well enough. Still, just like I said, overall, if I have to choose, I’d always choose cats.

You? 🙂

Question of the day (4th April).

Hey people! 🙂

Here’s the question I meant to ask you yesterday:

Do you feel like you have a special connection with animals?

My answer:

I don’t feel this way at all, but, judging from how a lot of animals are extremely clingy with me, you could draw exactly the opposite conclusion. I do like most animals in general, I grew up in the countryside where we’d always have a dog or two in the backyard, some wild cats running around, and fishes at home, I even had a hamster for a short while as a kid, then I started horse riding, and now have Misha and Jocky, but I couldn’t describe myself as a typical animal person, who would take some great interest in animals in general, or even a particular species, or anything like that. The only animal which I truly love in a way that goes beyond just liking it because it’s cute is Misha. Since I love Misha very passionately or obsessively as some say, a lot of people automatically assume I must be some crazy cat lady in general. And I don’t usually tell them that it’s otherwise because, of course I do like cats, but it’s not like I have some special interest or extreme love for felines as a whole. I feel I also had a very strong bond with a horse I used to ride for many years, that was absolutely amazing, but he died two years ago or so. I guess the fact that I’m madly in love with one cat and used to have an extraordinary bond with one horse doesn’t really make me an animal person overall or doesn’t mean I could have a connection with all of them.

For some reason though, a lot of animals seem to like me a lot. Often when I’m just walking somewhere and a cat passes by, it will come close to me and let me stroke it. Same about people’s dogs. We even have one dog in the neighbourhood who will always get so agitated whenever she sees me and will not calm down until her mummy lets her come over to me and I stroke her. It’s hilarious, although a bit weird. 😀 In my family, when we visit someone who has a cat or a dog, the pet will often come to me first thing, even though it’s my Mum or Sofi trying to coax it with some food to come to her and I don’t do anything. It’s especially remarkable with my aunt’s dog – Daisy – who is always literally all over me whenever I visit her. And I visit this particular aunt extremely rarely. In a way, getting so much attention from animals in social situations is fun, because it often rescues me from having to be social with people, or gives me something to do on family gatherings where I’d otherwise be bored to death (I think I talked about that when sharing Leah Nobel’s song Talking To The Dog At The Party, which I think should be introverts’ anthem 😀 ). In this regard, credit goes especially to my gran’s cat, Feluś, and one of my maternal grandparents’ backyard cats whom I called Michelle, who always keep me sane during social gatherings, as long as they are home. But on the other hand it often ends up drawing even more human attention to me and I don’t like that one bit. Also, especially with dogs, it can be quite awkward. I feel about dogs very much like I feel about children. They’re cute, but, in direct contact, I don’t really know how I should relate to them, what I’m supposed to do with them, and they can be a bit overbearing long-term. I even feel this way about our Jocky, as much as I like him at the same time. With Jocky it’s also funny because of course he’s mostly Sofi’s pet, just like Misha’s mostly mine, and Sofi and Jocky have very similar characters and love each other so much and play a lot. Still, it always bothers Sofi very much that Jocky always seems a lot more affectionate withh me than with her, even though I am not nearly as affectionate with him as Sofi is. I do play with him regularly and it’s fun, but I don’t do it not nearly as much as Sofi and don’t give him as much attention. Yet when we come back home from somewhere and he sees me and Sofi, he’ll be all over me first and only then scamper off to play with Sofi. I really feel for Sofi, I’d hate to have a similar situation with Misha where I’d love him as much as I do but he’d be more affectionate with Sofi. So while in a way I feel honoured that Jocky likes me so much, even though I don’t get it, I think for Sofi’s sake I’d rather like it more if he was more like that with her.

I guess it’s kind of similar to what my Dad experiences with children. He makes a rather rough impression and can be authoritarian and not necessarily your ideal candidate for a nanny, but, for some weird reason, he’s very popular with all toddlers with our family. They are often a bit shy around him initially when they come to us or when we come to their parents’ houses, but after some time, it’ll be my Dad on whose lap they’ll be sitting or running to him to tell him about some game they’ve been playing or give him a half-eaten lollipop or something, even though I would think my Mum is far more engaging with children than he is. Maybe it’s about his sense of humour and that, unlike my Mum, he hardly actually asks them any questions, and I suppose not all kids like being asked a lot of questions even if it’s in a very friendly way as is the case with my Mum, who is genuinely interested and doesn’t just automatically ask about how school is going.

Weird how such things work sometimes.

How is it with you? 🙂

Question of the day.

What’s your favourite animal? 🙂

My answer:

Misha, of course! Well, I like all cats, but Misha is obviously my favourite animal of all. I also really love horses since I’ve been riding for a large part of my life.

You? 🙂

Plu – “Milgi Milgi” (Greyhound Greyhound”.

Hey people! 🙂

Today, I’d like to share with you a little children’s song by Plu. You may remember, if you have been around here for a while, that Plu is a Welsh alt-folk trio, consisting of Gwilym Bowen Rhys (who has been my most recent faza subject) and his two sisters Elan and Marged, with Elan being the leader of the group. They have recorded an album solely dedicated to songs about animals for children, it’s called Holl Anifeiliaid I Goedwig (All The Animals of the Forest). Naturally, being a children’s songs album, it feels a bit different from their usual, otherworldly, psychedelic music, but I really like it. It has such a fun, carefree, innocent feel to it. I believe that at least some of these songs are traditional, but I have no clue as for who wrote/composed this one, Spotify credits don’t say anything and I don’t know any other version of this song. Milgi means greyhound in Welsh, and that’s exactly what this song is about, and also about a little hare. 

**** 

   This is Bibiel from the future, editing this post to share my translation of the song: 

  On top of the hill there is a small hare,


all through the night he’s grazing


With his speckled back and white belly


not worrying about a greyhound
Greyhound, greyhound, greyhound, greyhound,


give more food to the greyhound,


Greyhound, greyhound, greyhound, greyhound,


give more food to the greyhound.

And having run a little, little bit,


he’s running really badly


And one ear up and the other down,


saying goodbye to the greyhound.

After running for a while

the swift greyhound is feeling tired


And I see him in a heap on the floor


squirming in awful pains.

But the little hare is still going


and turns back smiling


While bouncing briskly over the hill


saying goodbye to the greyhound.

Question of the day (6th December).

Would you rather work in an animal rescue or search and rescue? Does your passion for animals/faith in humanity change your answer?

My answer:

I don’t think I’d be suited for either job, but purely hypothetically I’m fairly sure I’d choose search and rescue. I think it could be more interesting for me and also if anything, I feel like I’d be able to help people more than animals. But I suppose it would also be more emotionally engaging, although surely both these jobs are, and I’m not sure I’d always be able to cope with that, even assuming that there were no other reasons why search and rescue might not be the ideal job for me. Is it because of my faith in humanity? I don’t think I have such a thing as faith in humanity. Not because I am that cynical and think that people are all evil, but it’s somehow difficult for me to look at people, as different as they are, as one whole humanity thing and say if I believe in all of them or don’t believe in all of them. We’re all individuals. And taking it totally literally, I believe in God, not in people. 😀 I believe some people are worth believing in, some maybe not, but neither group of people makes me believe or not believe in people as a whole. So I’d rather steer clear of such big and beautiful-sounding, but (at least) to me, not saying much statements like “I believe in humanity”. So no, my faith in humanity doesn’t influence my answer. I just think people are deserving help if they need it and I find people interesting.

You? Would you actually seriously consider working in either of these jobs? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hi people! 🙂

Do you have any weird animal facts you can share with us?

My answer:

I am certainly not a wealth of knowledge about animals and don’t know how weird this is going to be for people, but recently, in the Polish cat literature anthology I’ve read that I’ve been mentioning a lot, there was a piece about how allegedly all cats sometimes make a sort of half-meow, as if they were about to meow but change their mind in the last second. Apparently the desired effect of it is immediate –
it results in total melting of the human heart. – I found that very interesting because, while obviously I can only hear when Misha’s meowing but can’t see when he’s about to meow but doesn’t actually do it, somehow it seemed questionable to me whether it’s indeed “all” cats who do it, I’ve never heard my family talk about Misha doing things like this, and he really does have a very wide and rich repertoire of manipulative strategies. I asked my Mum the next day and she said no, Misha doesn’t do it, unless involuntarily, like when he’ll yawn at the same time when he wants to meow or he’s been asleep for so long that his larynx has to relearn how to work properly and what it’s actually supposed to do, it’s very funny when Misha is so sleepy and can’t speak yet, or sometimes Misha will meow and sneeze at the same time and that’s really cute. But he never seems to do such things voluntarily and I really don’t get why would this be so particularly heart-melting and neither does my Mum, I mean everything about Misha is cute but I don’t know why this meowing but not meowing would be supposed to be more than anything else. Perhaps he spent too little time with his birth mummy –
Hansa Luft (yep, that’s apparently her name) – and she didn’t have enough time to teach him such sophisticated details, and now Misha has literally no contact with other cats as he seems not to like it at all so he has no way of obtaining such knowledge. So yeah, that’s my weird fact about my apparently weird Misha.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hi people! 🙂

What are your opinions on zoos?

My answer:

I’ve never been a huge fan, probably mostly because the animals I like the most and have the strongest connection to are the ones that are used to people and live with them, especially cats and horses. Besides, it feels a little boring to me since I can’t really even engage with the animals in any meaningful way, as you can’t touch them or anything. I remember when I went to the zoo for the first time when I was 5, it was shortly after I went to the boarding school (or rather nursery), and by then my parents would visit me every weekend there for a year or so. And on one of those weekends we went to the zoo which wasn’t very far away from the school, and I was so excited, because I loved bears at that time, and when Mum told me some time ahead that we’ll be going to the zoo, I was telling everyone that I’ll take some honey and will be feeding the bears honey with a spoon. 😀 But in the end I guess there actually were no bears, or at least I can’t recall that haha. it feels a bit like a museum or a gallery to me, and these kinds of places usually aren’t that fascinating to me, often even when the theme of it is interesting. I guess I’ll learn more from reading about it than wandering aimlessly around. Especially that I have some marvellous talent for nearly fainting in entertainment places like that. I’ve never actually passed out but I could feel really weak and drained and pretty close to it anyway. Probably because you typically visit such places in late spring/summer when it’s hot, and you often have to stand in one place there for a longer period, then move a few metres to another place where there is another object/animal/whatever and either listen and learn about it when you’re at a school trip or with a guide or something, or just wait while everyone else is looking at it if you’re only with sighted people, rather than just walk all the time or sit, and heat plus long standing in place makes my BP drop. So it feels very unpleasant, stressful and darws too much bad attention for my liking. Also, despite I am not some extreme and crazy animal rights/environment advocate or someone who would want to humanise animals in a serious way, I always find it sad when I happen to be at the zoo that all those poor animals have to be there and had to lose their freedom just because of our human whims because WE fancy seeing wild animals in real life. Sort of similar to circus in a way, both because it’s something I can’t really engage in, and because it involves wild animals only that circus seems generally more cruel and unethical than zoo, and the whole circus thing doesn’t really make much sense to me, I mean I can’t quite get it what’s exactly so funny about it, it seems a little primitive kind of entertainment to me but maybe I’m just either too stiff and lacking humour or it’s beyond my cognitive abilities to get it. 😀 I know that the zoo is a form of education so that people can actually see the animals, but I’m not sure if we necessarily have to see something face to face to be able to learn basic things about it unless we are scientists. I also understand that sometimes it can be life-saving for some endangered species to live in the zoo rather than in their natural habitat which may not be a safe place, but I guess those are exceptional cases and zoos don’t consist of only such animals but also such that would be perfectly fine in the wild.

I don’t have any huge dislike for zoos or am not against them in general, but they are just not really my thing, I guess.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hi guys! 🙂

Which pet made the most impact on your life?

My answer:

That surely has to be Misha. My family used to live in the country throughout my whole childhood, so whenever I was at home I was surrounded by animals, we’d always had a dog there and lots of cats around the backyard, some more, some less wild, and we’ve had aquarium fish since I can remember, and I also had a hamster for a brief moment, and when I was a bit older we also had a cat called Kiki. And now, except for Misha, we also have our dog Jocky. But I’ve never bonded with any animal as much as with Misha. That’s probably partly because I am not as much a dog person as I am a cat person, which isn’t to say I don’t like dogs, I do like most if they’re not overly intrusive and exuberant towards me when barely knowing me, but I just get along better with cats. And partly it’s also probably because I simply didn’t really spend that much time with those pets, as I was at the boarding school most of the time. I even hardly remember our cat Kiki, even though it wasn’t that very long ago that he was with us, I didn’t feel particularly emotional about him, even though i liked him. The only bit I remember more vividly is when I accidentally closed him on the terrace in the middle of a snowy, windy, winter night, and no one in the family could figure out how he managed to not only get on the terrace but also close himself there – long story and i’m pretty sure I’ve talked about it in some earlier post. – Also as I’ve said many times before, we are really very much like brainmates with Misha, and even though one may easily think that in some respects we are a really badly and absurdly paired couple, at the same time we have an awful load of things in common so we can simply get along somehow, I like to think that we do really well, even though it’s hard sometimes even just because you can get most information from him via eye contact and he’s extremely hypersensitive to touch. Misha has been a huge emotional support for me, which I can’t say at all about other pets that we’ve had, and I have a personal relationship with him, which I also didn’t have with the other ones and don’t really have a very strong one with Jocky even though I like him and he seems to like me crazily for some reason and we like to play.

You? 🙂

The sounds of animals. #SOCS

It’s Monday but I thought it would be fun to join in with

Stream Of Consciousness Saturday

today anyway. Last Saturday, Linda’s prompt for us was to write about the sounds that animals make and how we experience them.

Well, quite obviously I think, the first thing that comes to my mind when thinking of the sounds of animals in general, are feline sounds, more exactly the sounds that Misha makes. I find them soooooo soothing and relaxing. It’s pure bliss to me to be very close to Misha so that I can hear all the sounds of his. I generally love to hear cats purring (who doesn’t?), it’s a cute sound, but Misha’s purr is special. Not only because Misha is mine and I love Misha, but also because Misha’s purr is very quiet. An average cat will start purring before you even stroke him, and so loudly that sometimes even people on the other side of the room or even next door can hear it. Cats are very generous in that respect. Well, not Misha. His purrs are for VIP’s only, and even more often, he purrs just for himself. As you probably know if you’ve been around here for a while and read some of my posts about Misha or Misha’s posts, Misha is very fearful, rather solitary and not particularly vocal. It’s not like he’s selfish, like a lot of people think. He does want closeness, and cuddles and all that, but, first, it has to be on his conditions – when and where and how long he wants – and second, he is also afraid of touch and sudden movement and often it is very difficult for him to overcome this fear, though there are better days and worse, I’m not entirely sure what exactly it depends on, but probably just like with us humans – sometimes we’re cheerful, sometimes we’re sad, sometimes we’re anxious, sometimes we want to be alone, and sometimes with others, and sometimes we want to have fun and play. – Anyway, all those traits of Misha probably contribute to the fact that his purrs are usually very, very quiet. Like, most of the time you’d have to literally put your ear very near him to hear it, so usually you are more likely to feel his purr and the vibrations in his throat, rather than hear it. My Mum claims that Misha must have something wrong with his throat or larynx because it is not normal, and I’ve always thought it’s just the way he is and has nothing to do with his larynx. However, recently I’ve been thinking more about it because I’ve noticed that Misha frequently chokes a bit when eating. Not very badly, just a little bit. I suppose it’s not something new but just something that I hadn’t noticed previously. So that could be either through some larynx issues indeed, or perhaps because Misha tends to eat very quickly and a bit as if he supposed that someone is going to take the food away from him any time suddenly or do something scary so that he’ll have to run away immediately. Really sometimes you could think he’s got some bad trauma like a lot of shelter cats do.

We humans often think that when a cat purrs, it must be happy and content. Well, I’m no expert at felines, though I have observed Misha and read a lot about cats and their behaviour, and specifically purring, and it seems to be a myth. I think I’ve written on that previously, but I’ll say that here too. Cats can also purr when feeling anxious, or in pain, to soothe themselves in a variety of situations, and probably in several other instances which I don’t remember. The anxious bit is certainly true for Misha! I’ve often heard, or felt, that he purrs when he’s afraid or just tense and nervous. As I said, he frequently purrs just for himself, for example in his bed, before falling asleep, when no one is petting him or paying particularly much attention to him. I always find it so cute, it’s like a child would sing himself to sleep. I think it soothes him.

Apart from purring, cats of course make a lot of other noises. Misha hasn’t spoilt us with a particularly wide range of them, but he’s definitely capable of it, just chooses not to do it very frequently. He can be just as expressive with all the “hhrrru’s?” and meows he makes as we can be with our languages and tones of voice, which makes him an excellent manipulator! Some of his sounds alone will break your heart and fill you with overwhelming sadness, others will make you annoyed and irritated at him even though he didn’t do anything other than meow or hhrrru? because it sounds like he’s screaming at you, others will make you feel lighter and happier and like it’s going to be a very beautiful day, and some will make you rush for Mish ice-cream and sausages urgently on autopilot. There are also such that will let you know that poo is on its way (when Misha is for example closed somewhere and can’t go to the loo) or that he’s going to vomit (this is probably the only Mish sound I really dislike, or that sun is shining so beautifully that Mishka would like to go out just for a little while, or that the fun has gone one step too far and Misha has transformed into a real predator.

When Misha sleeps in my room and doesn’t feel too anxious, I love to sit or lay very close to him, and listen to his purr, breath, heartbeat and his tummy gurgles. It’s better than any kind of music or relaxing sounds we could ever create! Especially Misha’s breath is something I love, and, again, it’s not always easy to hear well even when you’re relatively close. A lot of the time, especially when he isn’t purring, his breath is very similar to that of a baby.

Another Mish sound I truly love is the sound of little Mish paws on a carpet when he’s running or walking quickly, it’s a very quiet sound but so delightful.

There are sounds that cats make though that I am not a big fan of, especially when it comes to wild cats. When I was a small child and lived in the country, we had lots of wild cats on our backyard. Some got used to people and were very cuddly, others not, but they were both fighting and copulating frequently at nights, and I hated hearing that. It was scary! Especially when I was very small and had no idea what those sounds were! Just imagine it – everyone’s asleep, you’re in bed and suddenly you hear moaning and howling and lots of other creepy sounds, as if some haunted or long condemned individuals were wandering around out there. – 😀 My sensory anxiety always gets way more nasty when I don’t know the source of a sound, which I guess is not particularly strange as we’re always more likely to be scared of unknown stimuli especially when our brains are going to see them as a danger anyway. Now that I know what sounds cats make sometimes, they no longer provoke my sensory anxiety even if they are a little creepy sometimes. Here we also have a lot of wild cats, though Jocky keeps them at a distance most of the time. When we didn’t have Jocky though, there were loads of them and they made lots of noise as well, but that sounded more like extremely distressed babies crying or shrieking. 😀

We also had a fox farm in the neighbourhood for a while which was awful. My Mum has extremely sensitive sense of smell – she says she could work as a police dog 😀 – and it was always particularly unpleasant for her when the stinky smell of foxes would fill the air after the rain for example. What I hated the most though, were the sounds they were making sometimes. Before we moved here, I had no idea what sounds, if any, foxes could make, and the first time I heard that was very unpleasant. Not only because their barking is really unpleasant I think rather objectively, but also because… if any of you had read my short story about sleep paralysis called

“Help!”

, then perhaps you remember the guy called Ian, who was the main character’s sleep abuser. Well, for some reason, my “Ian” sometimes makes eerily similar sounds, and has had since I know him, that is since pretty much forever, dunno, maybe he has some fox relatives or whatever. So you can imagine that it scared me out of my pants.

Which animals sounds do you like or find soothing? Are there any that you particularly dislike? 🙂

 

My Misha’s silly ramble, and Misha’s song of the day – Faribosz Lachini – “Lonely Leaf”.

Hhrrru? 😻
This is Misha, but today there will be no episode of “The Human Life of Misha Hhrrru?”, I’ve ran off of ideas temporarily, so I’ll just ramble about my real, feline life.
How are you pets and peeps doing? What’s the weather like where you are?
It’s very windy here today and very chilly and I heard a lot of rain earlier. I am in a good mood today because I slept well at night, but I’m getting sleepy again, so I think I’ll go down to the laundry room and have a nap. Mum was there for a long time and I assisted her, she was sorting out some clothes and I love to feel and smell different fabrics. And she left the door open to the laundry room, even though she’s left the house now. It is not often that I can go to the laundry room when I want, and I really like it, because it’s very warm and cosy, so I shall jump on the chance soon. The peeps are having st. Nicholas’ day today and are giving presents to each other pretending that it weren’t them but st. Nicholas, which I think is stupid because they don’t even know him so why would he give them presents. But it’s also very cool because I got a present too. A whole pack of my favourite Mish ice-cream – that is my favourite sauce, yay! – I can’t wait when I’ll have some more, I only had one bowl in the morning.
But I wanted to tell you about one beautiful thing. I told you that it’s windy today. Very, very windy. The wind is howling outside and it is very interesting to hear. But it’s even more interesting to sit on the windowsill in the kitchen and look out at all the leaves that are dancing and swirling in the wind. You know I love leaves, don’t you? I do. I like to play with leaves when someone brings me some, I like to look at leaves moving, I like the rustling of leaves and I like to think about leaves. If I wouldn’t be a cat, I would like to be a leaf. I often feel like a leaf. A lonely leaf. But I think I wrote about that a lot too, even in my last “human” post. It’s sad when there is a lonely leaf. So I was looking out if there are any lonely leaves dancing in the wind on their own and every time I saw one, I was clinging closer to the glass to send it some warmth and to tell it that It’s not alone, that I am here and I sometimes feel lonely too. I hope it could hear me and see me. I believe that leaves have feelings, so maybe they can hear and see as well? I would like that to be true. I wanted to comfort all the lonely leaves on our backyard and tell them that even when they don’t have anyone else to dance with other than the cold wind they are very beautiful, even more beautiful dancing on their own! And that I love them and that deep down I am a leaf too! Is that stupid too? I am a little afraid it is, but a bigger part of me doesn’t care. And I saw that Jocky likes leaves too, which I am happy about because he is closer to them than I am so he can comfort them better. I think he was trying to dance with them but he’s too fluffy. The leaves must have been laughing at him. It’s cool that both me and Jocky like leaves and want to dance with them. But it’s unfair that he can and I can’t, I can only imagine I do, even though surely if I had a chance I would be a much better dancer than him because I am slimmer.
Do you like leaves? Do you think it’s stupid what I think?
Mila is soooo lazy and lousy today so I thought I will post song of the day today for her, because there hasn’t been any in a few days. I have a very different taste than Mila, I like jazz, I like classical music, and renaissance music, and baroque music, and some very calm, relaxing, electronic music, and other types of ver calm and relaxing music, sometimes I like opera, and very slow and melancholic tunes, especially oldies, some slower blues and film soundtracks, I like Russian pop and folk and such, and when I’m in a very happy-silly mood I listen to Russian drum & bass or disco, but only when I’m happy-silly, I think my favourite music genre is jazz and my favourite music instrument is piano. I hate rock though, I just hate hate hate it! But, there are some pieces of music that both of us like or that even all three of us like – with Zofijka. – So I chose such a song of the day that we all like because Mila would be mad at me if I posted something she doesn’t like, she thinks my music taste is mostly cringeworthy and I think hers is mostly trashy. Zofijka found this song last week on the Internet and I loved it so very much, and they both liked it too. The guy who composed it is from Iran and lives in Canada, and I’ve never been to any of those countries and never met him, but I think he wrote this especially for me, because even Zofijka agreed that it is so much my style and it’s about me. Zofijka also said a weird thing, that this piece makes her think of war and dying children. I think it’s strange. It’s so peaceful and beautiful.

Mishpurrs.

Misha 💜 💚 💙

The Human Life Of Misha Hhrrru? ep. 8.

Hhrrru? 😻

Yay! Finally I’ve got to write another post. How are you all pets and peeps doing? Here’s another episode of my what-if human life. *****

March 9

I am Misha. I am 8. I just came back from school today. It was mostly a very boring day but the last lesson we had was plast plast –
that is how I call art. – I love plast plast! My Mum does it, and my plast plast teacher used to go to college with her, but she’s not very nice to me because my mum is her friend. It’s the opposite. She is very demanding. She wants more from me than all the other kids. When any other kid does something a bit wrong she says it’s okay as it is, but when I do even a very little mistake, she is very worried and wants me to try more. I used to be a bit sad about it and think I’m so very bad at plast plast, and I didn’t want to be bad at plast plast because I love it and my family always tells me I am a very good painter, but mum told me she does it because she wants me to develop my talent. I guess it’s very nice of her. I want to be a very good painter and now I’m happy when she tells me that something is wrong. But at the same time, she’s hardly ever satisfied. She constantly wants me to improve something and even mum says she’s a bit too harsh on me because I am just a little child. But guess what? Today she was very happy with me.

She wanted us to draw or paint or present in any possible way that suits us, our favourite season. My favourite season is autumn, because I love leaves. I like to think about them. But it makes me sad when I think about lonely leaves. When one fallen leaf is lying alone, or among leaves of a different kind, with no leaf of its own kind, or if there is only one leaf on a twig or the whole tree, it makes me so very sad. When I feel lonely, I often think that I feel like a lonely leaf. Some people say it’s stupid because leaves are never lonely, but I think they can be, very often. Whenever it’s autumn and leaves are falling and I come back from school, I try not to step on them. My mum says I’m too sensitive about leaves and that they have no feelings. But I just love them! I’ve always had. It makes me sad when someone says they don’t feel anything, I’m sure they do. But mum thinks I have such strange thoughts and ideas because I’m the only child and have no one to play with. But I have Feluś, and when I don’t have Feluś I have myself to play with. And even if I had many siblings and many friends, which would be very lovely, I guess I still would be myself, wouldn’t I? With my own thoughts and ideas. I would still have enough place in my heart to love leaves and care for them. And when it’s getting cold, I sometimes take a couple leaves home with me and put them close to my bed, so that they are warm and cosy and they have me and I have them. Mum says it’s unhygienic. But how can something as natural as leaves be unhygienic? Perhaps I’ll have to make a bath for them when I take them home next year before I put them in my bedroom. I wonder how they would feel about that. But I wanted to talk about plast plast. So of course I decided I will paint an autumn picture. An autumn forest with colourful trees and with lots of leaves, but no lonely leaves because I didn’t want to feel sad. I miss leaves because there are none at this time of year. They were all happy and with their leaf families, and leaves on the trees were happy too. i even managed to paint the wind moving the leaves, and light rain was falling. I painted birds and some other small animals, and a little grey cat rolling around among the leaves. I was so engrossed in this that I didn’t know what was going on around me and suddenly I felt someone elbowing me. It was Feluś, he sits with me in class. “Hey, you, Misha, I’m speaking to you.” – he whispered. – “Hmmm what?” – I asked, looking up from my picture at him reluctantly. “I asked why do you painted a cat in this forest. Cats don’t live in the forest”. “This one does.” “Ahaa, and of course this cat is called Misha?” – he asked giggling. – I have a book series about a cat called Misha, and I myself often feel like I’d love to be a cat, and I often include a cat called Misha in my paintings. Feluś thinks it’s weird, and that I am weird, but he likes me anyway. I nodded, and got back to my picture. I finished it, and had a lot of time to wait for all the others to finish. Finally the teacher said the time has passed and that she’d now like to see our works. She came to me and Feluś in the end, and seeing my picture, she gasped.
“Oh, Misha! This is beautiful! Very simple, but you really have a knack for colour, I must admit that. There’s still a long way for you to go but I can say it now in front of the whole class that you are very talented and you need to develop it. But, why did you paint a cat here?” “It’s a cat called Misha.” “Ah, well, I assume this explains everything” – she laughed. – She didn’t understand and pretended she did, I don’t like it, but other than that I was sooooo very happy that she praised me. I got an A for this painting. I’m home now. My mum is abroad for a couple of days and grandma is here. She cooks us meals and all. It’s grandma from dad’s side, who lives nearby, not the one who gave me the books about Misha the cat. I’d prefer that grandma to come here and take care of me. This grandma is always irritated and grumpy and complains about everything and forces me to eat things I don’t like and is always asking what I’m doing and whether I did my homework, as if I never did, and when she’s not watching me she’s constantly watching very strange series on the telly. I’m not a baby, she doesn’t have to remind me of my school work. Today we had mushroom soup and liver for dinner, yuck! I guess grandma can cook better than mum, because mum often swears while cooking, cuts her fingers and does lots of strange unnecessary things and is always in a hurry, when she makes cereal for me she boils milk over most days so I’m late for school because she has to boil it twice or doesn’t remember to take out the cake in time from the oven, and grandma knows what she’s doing or at least she looks like she does, but at least mum doesn’t force me to eat what I don’t like, and grandma doesn’t even let me eat cereal. I had to eat scrambled eggs today for breakfast and I hate them. But actually I don’t like a lot of foods. I don’t even like bread, I never did. And grandma says it’s because I’m spoiled and don’t respect what other people do for me. No, I don’t if they do something I don’t like when they know I don’t like it, it’s malicious. But I actually haven’t done my homework today yet, so I better get to it now. Misha 💜 💙 💚

The Human Life of Misha Hhrrru? ep. 6.

Hhrrru? 😻
This is Misha. How are you pets and peeps doing? Any yummy things you’ve eaten this week? Any adventures? Me, I almost choked with a bracelet yesterday. Mum hung it on my neck, when Mila wasn’t around. Mila never lets people decorate me like a Christmas tree because it has happened a few times that it hooked on to something and I couldn’t free myself, and it almost choked me. That was a loose bracelet with a cat on it and Mum thought nothing would happen to me but I didn’t like the idea, and neither did Mila. It started to irritate me last evening and I wanted to do something with it and was yanking on it with my teeth, and then I couldn’t free my teeth from it and was choking with it again. Mila was soooo mad at Mum, and I was too, sort of.
Oh but I promised you to share my what-if human lifestory. So, here is episode 6. There won’t be episodes 1-5 because those are reserved just for Zofijka according to her request. So we’re starting at the time when I’m six years old. Here we go: *****
The Human Life of Misha Hhrrru? Ep. 6.
January 30.
It’s my 6th birthday today, yay! SO I have a lot to talk about. It was a fantastic day! I’m so happy, I couldn’t sleep last night, wondering what will happen today and what presents I will get. So I’m a bit sleepy now. I got up almost as soon as the sun was out and got dressed super quickly, like I never do, and was downstairs in 5 minutes.
“Oh, Misha, you’re up already?” – Mum was in the kitchen, stirring something, and looked very surprised. “What happened, you’re never out of bed that early on Saturdays? Did you forget it’s weekend?”
“Did you forget that it’s my birthday, mum?” – I chirped and felt so happy that I couldn’t resist and jumped up high in the air. I’m very good at jumping.
“Oh, really?! I completely forgot!” – I felt very hurt. How could she forget about my birthday? And yesterday she remembered, so why not now? “Mum, how can you not remember?” – I said with a very sad face.
“Oh Misha, you little silly sausage, how could I forget about your birthday? Of course I didn’t! I was just joking.” – I breathed a sigh of relief and laughed, at that “sausage”, I love sausages. She quickly came over to me and scooped me in her arms, and started spinning around the kitchen with me, as she used to when I was younger, singing Happy Birthday, and planting kisses all over my face in the meantime. “Happy birthday, my little, sweet, precious boy”.
“Mum, I am six… I’m not little” – I said, starting to feel a bit dizzy and embarrassed.
“Okay, okay, giant Misha. You must be patient and understanding with your old mother. For me, you will always be my tiny little Misha who is 3 and a half. My memory isn’t that good to always catch up with your age. Now, sit down and have a mug of hot chocolate. I’ve just made it for you.”
“Yeah, that’s what I love most about having a birthday. I always get a big mug of steaming hot chocolate. Not a cup, a mug. And there was a little cupcake with a decorative lettering on it saying “Happy birthday, Misha”. I knew it wasn’t my mum who made it, my mum is rubbish at baking, everyone knows it, but it felt so cool that I had my own special cupcake with Misha written on it. It felt a little odd to eat it. Most happily I would just keep it until monday and show off with it at the nursery, but… it was too yummy. So I sat at the table and ate my food. Mum didn’t even force me to eat sandwiches, as she always does. I hate bread. But I do like cupcakes. As I was eating, I could hear dad waking up and yawning, and pottering around the room. I was still enjoying my meal and just finished to eat the word “happy” off the cupcake when he came into the kitchen, still yawning and stretching and rubbing his eyes.
“Ah, Misha, you here already?” – he said, and I could hear he was still half asleep. Dad’s a heavy sleeper, just like me. I wonder why then did he find himself such a job that he has to wake up so early for it, and even on Saturdays. When I will be his age, I will be the boss, so I’ll never have to wake up early. I’ll sleep to 12 PM. Everyone will work for me, and I’ll only pop in there in the afternoon to see if they did everything well and give them their cellery. Loooots of cellery, and for their children too, even if they don’t like it. If they will work well I will give them loads of cellery but if not I will only give them carrots. I’ll be very fair with cellery, not like my Dad’s boss. I don’t know why people want cellery from their boss but my dad constantly complains about his, and that it’s too low and not as much as it should be. Indeed, I’ve never saw him coming back from work with cellery, but I’m quite happy about it, I hate it. And I hate all vegetables. Mum says I’m very picky and would only eat meat and junk food.
Dad was drinking his coffee and reading a newspaper, but I could see he wasn’t paying attention to it.
“Dad, do you remember?”. – He jumped in his chair as if I woke him up from a nap. “Yes, yes, I remember about your swing, I’ll repair it tomorrow”.
“I’m not talking about the swing, dad!” – yeah, that’s always the case with my dad, he never remembers the most important things. – “Do you remember what’s the day today?” “Ah, yeah, Saturday.”
“But it’s a very special Saturday.”
Finally Mum had to chime in.
“Filip, your son is desperately trying to get your attention. It’s his birthday today. Misha is six years old!”.
“Oh my God, the time is flying so fast!” – Dad said, suddenly looking much more brisk. – “So, how many bumps should I give you, son?” “Seven!” – I yelled with a thrill of happiness.
“Not now, he’s just eaten.” – said Mum.
“Okay, so maybe we’ll do it after I come back from work?”
“No, no, dad, please no! I’ve only eaten a bit.”
He glanced uncertainly at mum and I prayed that she would agree. I loved getting birthday bumps! “Okay, but be careful. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
I clapped my hands excitedly. “Yaay!”.
He bumped me up in the air and I gasped and laughed happily, with my eyes wide from both joy and a bit of fear.
“You’re too light, your mother has to give you more chocolate to drink!” – said dad, finally putting me down on to the floor. “More! More! Please, dad, I want more!” – I screamed and laughed.
“No, it’s forbidden. If you get more bumps than how old you are plus one, it will make you very unlucky this year. You don’t want it, do you?”. –
“You’re lying! I want 10, no… 20… 25 bumps, so I’ll be lucky for many, many years. I’ll be too heavy to be bumped up when I’ll be an adult, so I want enough of them now. Maybe even 50”. “Okay, 25.” – agreed dad after a while.
“Filip, don’t be crazy!…” – mum tried to intervene, but I was already in the air again, squealing with joy.
In the end, no one counted how many bumps I received. Soon even mum joined in, and we started playing that they were sending me high up into space. Mum took out a big blanket and wrapped me up in it, and they were both holding it and lifting me very high up into the air. Until finally I hit the chandelier with my foot, not strongly, but mum was afraid we will break it, and said that we’re all insane and need to stop.
My chocolate was already cold, but mum just sighed and made me another one, but without as much foam, it was still good.
Just as I finished my breakfast, I noticed that mum went into the living room and was now carrying a few packets in her arms.
“Wow, presents for me!” – I screamed, and started tearing the paper on all of them at once. “Easy, Misha, your presents won’t run away.” – dad said cool-headedly.
I didn’t care. But I had to decide which box to open first, after all. I decided on the biggest one. It took me some time and effort to open it, but when I did, I couldn’t believe my eyes… I stared at my present with open mouth… A big, beautiful painting set. Just for me.
“Do you like it?” – mum asked tentatively after a while. “Dad said it’s too much and too fancy for a child your age, but at least you won’t have to paint on my easel anymore. And we do think you are a very talented lit… big boy. Incredibly talented. And you need to develop this talent.” – mum was speaking to me so calmly and seriously, and as if I was a really very big boy, and it made me feel so proud of myself. When my first shock passed, I quickly stood and ran up to her, hugging and kissing her. “Thank you, mummy! You’re fantastic. It’s so great!”.
“You need to thank dad most importantly.” – she said when I finally freed her from a very strong hug. So I ran up to dad and thanked him as well. I was so happy I could have cried.
My mum is an artist and paints a lot, and I’ve always loved painting too, but I’ve never had my own things to do that with. And now I had my own little easel, my own paintbrushes, beautiful watercolours, and even a box of new crayons, and some other artsy things. I couldn’t wait to try them out.
I could see my parents were also moved with my joy, but now dad really had to go to work. He kissed both of us and left.
I left my painting set on the table and went to see what other presents I got from my parents. There was a little lockable diary, with a cat and my name written on the front cover. My parents always say that I resemble a cat very much, and that I must have been a cat in my previous life, if there are previous lives. And I really like cats and things with cats on them. They really like me, too. I also got very warm and cosy slippers with cats on them. “It’s still winter, Mishka, and you didn’t have any good slippers” – Mum said.
I liked them a lot as well. I like smooth and warm things. There was also a pair of brand new football boots for me, which made me euphoric. I love football!
“Oh, and this is a present from your grandma” – mum said, producing another box. –
There was a small picture book – “Adventures of a Cat Called Misha”. “Yay! That sounds like the right book for me! And this cat is grey! My favourite colour!”
“This is just the first book in the series. We can read all of them sometime if you like it. I told grandma that there’s no way you wouldn’t like this book.”
It was a very pleasant day. I spent it just as I liked. I didn’t have to go to the nursery, and mum didn’t have to go anywhere either. I had the time to try out my new painting set, and I painted a little scene that my mum liked very much.
I painted a big, green grassland, with lots of different animals in the background, and some pretty flowers. In the middle, there was a big blanket, and my parents and me were sitting on it, and there was a big basket full of food. We were having a picnic. After a while I also painted my new football boots on my feet, and a football lying close to me, so that someone could think that Misha in the painting has just been playing football.
Mum said it was “breathtakingly skillful and detailed for a 6-year-old boy” and for a little while she indeed looked as if she couldn’t breathe.
Later that day, we had pizza and my family came. Grandma, aunt and uncle, and their son – my cousin Sasha. – His real name is Aleksander, but no one calls him that. They all were stunned by my painting too, and spoiled me with compliments. Sasha wanted to paint something too, but he is only three and doesn’t really know how to do it. He only wanted because I did. I let him use my crayons. I don’t want anyone to paint with my watercolours. Not such babies like Sasha for sure.
I also played a bit of football, but there’s no one living near us with whom I could play, I can only do that with my friend Feluś from school so that was a bit dull to play on my own.
After they left, mum told me that she had some spare clay and I could play around with it if I wanted. I love clay! And in the end we both ended up playing around with it, making lots of animals out of it. My mum is really good at that. I hope one day I will be as good as her.
Dad came back in the evening, a bit earlier than usual, and mum made a huge bowl of popcorn, we and watched cartoons for a few hours. That was so cool! My parents don’t usually do that with me. Dad just takes a shower and goes to bed because he is so tired, and mum always has tons of other things to do, even if she is home all day. So I was really really happy. And now I’m really really sleepy. Mishpurrs. 😴
Misha 💜 💚 💙

Misha: Zofijka’s got an idea.

Hhrrru? :3
How are you pets and peeps doing? Have you had anything very yummy to eat this week? Some great adventures? Let me know!
I wanted to write about an idea that Zofijka had recently and ask if you like it.
So, you know that I have a brain connection with Mila? Like, I can connect my brain to hers and then I can type (she doesn’t let me to type on her keyboard Mishself because I once blocked it hehehe) and do all sorts of things that humans do via her, sort of remotely, especially when we are with Zofijka. Mila often tells me what I should tell Zofijka because Zofijka listens to me more than to her and she likes to ask me about things or tell me what she was doing at school – lots of boring things but people usually bore me to death with their lives so I’ve kinda gotten used to it and can even pretend I’m incredibly intrigued and at the same time think what I’ll have for supper. – I can also connect to Zofijka but she doesn’t like it so I only do that when I want to do some artsy things like drawing, but she hardly ever lets me anyway. – When I’m connected to someone, I have the access to their brain world and we can exchange information and it’s very fun but a bit complicated, I don’t think any other pets even use such innovative technology. I usually talk to Zofijka in the evenings when she’s in bed and when she’s going to sleep either me or Mila tell her a story. Mila tells her about Jim – that dude in Australia that I think she has written about, who doesn’t need to eat and lives on helping everyone in the world – and I tell her very short stories about what my life would be like if I was a human. Every day I tell her about one day in my life, one per year. I always start it “I am Misha I am… years old” and I tell her about one day in each year of my fictional human life.
And earlier this week, when I was telling her about my life at 14, she suddenly interrupted me and said “Actually, Misha, why wouldn’t you write about that on your blog? Ask Mila, maybe she will let you”. And I was so excited, yay, that’s a great idea!
So, tell me, pets and peeps, would you like to hear about my human life? Let me know, and Mila says we could start a Friday series on that. It’ll be completely spontaneous, not exactly how I would love to live had I been born human, but just what comes to my mind, good and bad things. But Zofijka says she doesn’t want me to write about when I was very little, until 5, because she wants that to be just for her, so I’ll start from when I was six, it’ll be a little bit like diary entries, or something similar.
All the pets out there, what would you like to do with your lives if you were humans? Mishpurrs. :3
Misha

Winter is coming and I’m happy, but they say I’m not normal.

Hhrrru? 😻

It’s Misha. I haven’t posted for a while because my life was very boring and I didn’t know what to post about. How are you pets and peeps doing?

I feel that the winter is slowly coming to us, and I’m happy about it. I’m getting more sleepy and there are more cosy and warm places around to sleep in. The radiators are so warm. My favourite one is in the living room, it has a space for me to lay on it, and there is a basket just for me. I also like snow. I think it will be a while before it comes but I really like looking at it. Zofijka even let me out for a little while a few days ago, but on the leash. I hate that, I’d like to be able to go where I want. She let me walk around the backyard, and I was so extremely happy to see the sun, and smell the fresh air, that I just fell on the ground with joy and rolled around in ecstasy, wanting to make my whole fur smell like the air outside. Zofijka was looking at me as if I was crazy but she doesn’t understand anything. Then she wanted to take me back home, but I didn’t want to go. I wanted to run away, and I almost did, but she caught me and yelled at me that I’m not normal. I would like to know why. Is it not normal for a cat to want to be out and about? It’s not normal (and selfish) when a human is unable to understand such a basic need. I think it’s not normal that they keep me in literally ALL the time, except for those short walks maybe once a month or even less often.

Do you think it’s not normal that I want to be out? Do you like to spend time out in nature, does it bring you pleasure? For me, it makes me euphoric!

Mishpurrs.

Misha 💜 💚 💙