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Art imitating life
A few people have asked me if Greg took the last picture of the black and white cat with the colored eyes. Yes, he did and yes, that’s Wrigley. In case you didn’t know, Greg has an artist’s soul and has become quite a wonderful photographer.
I’ve kicked myself a few times when I’ve forgotten my little cheap-o camera that I carry around in my purse and miss photo opportunities, like the time I saw Cruella DeVille. YES! Cruella DeVille (or at least her twin sister) walking down Old Arbat street. I pointed her out to my friend and then literally jumped up and down in frustration at not being able to take her picture and prove to all that Cruella lives and she lives in Moscow! She was straight out of Central Casting, her black and white spotted coat (looking a bit aged) the moth-eaten fur collar, skinny ankles tottering about on pointy pumps and the wild long witchy white hair. It was amazing and only 2 people were there to witness and appreciate the moment. I still mourn that lost opportunity.
Greg almost never has missed opportunities because when we go places, he lugs out the huge camera backpack, digs around for the perfect assortment of lenses and drags it all around everywhere we go. “Dinner at friends? Let me get the camera. A sleigh ride? MUST have the camera! Dinner at a restaurant with a belly dancer? Let me get the – why not?!?” Yes, I get impatient when we’re late and he’s assembling his photo gear and no, I don’t like it when one of our carry-on allowances is nothing more than camera and accouterments, but I have to admit, he is really taking some great pictures which makes it worth the effort and inconvenience.
This picture was taken one night walking down Old Arbat street (a shopping street with no cars or parking on it) to our car from a friend’s house. This girl had assembled her entertainment area, complete with her tip box in front, leather shirt and lit lamps. She proceeded to dance around whirling her lanterns and amazing us all that she was wearing only jeans, gloves and a leather shirt in 15 degree weather. She put on a nice show, Greg got some good pictures and tipped her well for the opportunity. That’s the great thing about Moscow, there is always something interesting and amazing to see around the next corner.
We’re trying our hardest never to miss opportunities to get out and see the sights and travel when we can because we know that no matter how long we’re here, we’ll never see it all and we don’t want to feel like we didn’t take advantage of our time here. This coming weekend we’re going to St. Petersburg so we’ll choose the best picture and experience and share it with you.
Eyes
People have been asking me how Wrigley has been doing with the move and my silence on cat matters has, I’m sure, been strange, coming from someone who has immersed herself in everything cats for the past 23 years. Part of my silence has a lot to do with the fact that I was still getting over the sadness of parting with cats that I thought would be with me for the rest of their lives and I was reluctant to talk too much about anything that had to do with the worry and upset of the past months.
The worst part was placing my adult cats because I know that many people don’t feel the same bond with an adult cat as they do with cats they’ve gotten as kittens. Even though I’ve placed countless kittens in my 23 years as a breeder, worked in Abyssinian rescue for several years now and consider myself fairly competent at interviewing and ferreting out excellent homes for cats, I still worried about whether I was misjudging anybody. People, as we all know, are capable of some pretty inconsistant behavior and I’ve regretted trusting people in the past. Placing a cat with the wrong person and moving to Moscow leaves me with no possible way to help the situation or even get my cat back. Well, a few months and a lot of worry has passed and I’m becoming more comfortable with my decisions and also more comfortable with being a one-cat person.
As many of you know, we had to pay $4,500 deposit per EACH CAT to allow them to stay in our apartment here in Moscow and were limited to 2 cats. We paid our fee and concentrated on finding good homes for the healthiest and most resilient of our group. The two we kept were Tempest, in the last stages of breast cancer and Kobiyashi Maru (or Wrigley per Dr. Zeplin) who we bottle raised as a kitten and was extremely attached to us as a result. We placed all our cats and getting closer to our departure date, we began to realize that Tempest was losing ground at an alarming rate and would not be able to make the move to Russia. This left Wrigley as the only Aby.
If you had asked me before the move if my cats were happy and if they had a good life, I wouldn’t have hesitated in telling you, “Absolutely!” They all have been provided with the highest quality food, fresh water daily, clean litterboxes, a clean environment, daily attention, lots of toys, were rarely caged (only for fighting or sickness) and were divided in small groups so they wouldn’t have to deal with the politics and pecking orders of a multicat household. Greg’s allergies and tendency to wake up at the slightest sound or movement prevented us for being able to allow the cats to sleep in our bed at night, but all in all, I would have said that they have had a good life. Wrigley lived in our main living area with Tempest and T.S. (now Coco) and everyone seemed content.
Wrigley made the trip to Moscow with nary a peep or trauma (thus not being mentioned in the blog earlier) and moved into the apartment with no problem at all. Then after we all recovered from the time change and jet lag, something changed: Wrigley blossomed. Soon our quiet, well-mannered little cat was zooming around the apartment like her tail was on fire. Walls have become Nascar embankments to be, literally, ran on. Sleeping with us is a fabulous treat to be savored and soon she mastered the “tap on the head and ask for the covers to be lifted” move and divides her time happily sleeping next to or on one of us. She’s taught us how to launch the coveted red sparkle ball so she can play fetch and has invented the “Hide, pounce, run, hide and ambush” game and now she and I are madly running around the apartment (me giggling, her trilling) trying to find new hiding spaces so we can surprise the other during the ambush. She knows which cabinet the treats are kept and asks for (and receives) her freeze-dried meat treats many times a day. When the door bell rings, she runs to the door, gets up on the chair next to the door and looks at the TV screen to see who is here to visit. Wrigley has mastered Moscow!
I can now see that providing good physical care for my cats isn’t the only thing they really needed. What they really craved was 24 hour a day, 100% access to interact with the people that they love. To think that I was so misguided to think that providing for the physical needs of the little souls I was in charge was enough for them is embarassing for someone who thinks they know a lot about cats. Of course, I realize that I am just following what is probably a common human condition, taking for granted. All I can say is that I’m grateful that I’ve been taught a lesson and can employ this lesson to the important living beings in my life for many years to come.
Friends sans Makeup
My friend, Sandi Mierop called me last night and we talked for 2 hours, compliments of Vonage (love sticking it to The Man!) and she LOVED being mentioned in the blog (the friend in Alaska), so I thought I would give her an extra thrill, add to her 5 minutes of fame and mention her again and then take away the thrill and put her picture WITHOUT MAKEUP in here, too. Of course, I don’t have makeup on, either, but I hardly wear the stuff anyway.
Sandi and I met back in 1986 or 1987 when they came to get their first Abyssinian, Nike. We became friends and since then they’ve owned 6 of my cats, Sandi has been my boss, both in court reporting and when she bought a vintage house to be renovated and I was part of the slave-labor force. We’ve spent countless hours on the phone and even went on vacation to Kauai last year (damn, that was fun) together and we all got along like peas and carrots. Maybe not after this picture!!
Sandi told me that for revenge, Alaska was going to cut itself in half so that Texas would only be the THIRD largest state. LOL! Good one!
Corn on the Cob?
Okay, I hate to continue talking about food so much, but the honest fact is that food — as we know it — is no longer something that we can take for granted as something easily attainable. Of course, there are large supermarkets and about 50% of the bigger ones are filled with food products but not in the same proportions, certainly not the same products the same way we’re used to seeing them.
Take something simple and as common as corn on the cob. Yes, it is in Russia, however, it’s in a JAR and there are 4 jars on the shelf. I can’t make up my mind whether there are 4 jars on the shelf because people are buying them up or if those 4 jars have been sitting there since the beginning of time. If people are buying these, they obviously have never had the opportunity to put cobs of fresh sweet corn in a pot of boiling water and cook it until it’s cooked, but still a bit crisp, cover it with real butter, salt and pepper and make a big mess on your face eating it. I feel kind of sorry for them, but maybe I’m mourning something I really shouldn’t be having in the first place (exhibit 1, my big butt!).
Speaking of mourning something you shouldn’t be having in the first place, there are almost NO FAST FOOD restaurants here and the ones that have made it just aren’t the same. There are 4 fast-food restaurants that I’ve identified in Moscow: McDonalds (of course), Kentucky Fried Chicken (who would have guessed KFC AND they serve BEER at their restaurants!), Subway and Texas Chicken (which I’m pretty sure is Church’s Chicken). These restaurants aren’t handily available around every corner in order to trigger the idea that you might be getting hungry within the next 2 hours so you’d better stop NOW, but they’re set up like regular restaurants downtown (no drive-thru windows) and in the malls. So, if you get a hankering for McDonald’s, you walk 10 minutes to the nearest Metro, take the train downtown (25 minutes), where you’re expelled underground. You walk until you eventually surface, get your bearings and then navigate your way to the McDonalds you think you remember was on whatchamacallit street. 15 minutes later, you enter what looks like a McDonalds, but all the menus are in Russian and all the kids taking your order speak Russian. You point to what you hope is a McMuffin and true to McDonald’s lore, instant gratification is delivered within 60 seconds…or so you think until you peel your McMuffin and are presented with some sausage-like meat product, lettuce, tomato and lots of mayo on an English muffin. Instant, yes. Gratification, no way. FYI, the chicken is equally disappointing and I suspect that The Colonel, in order to avoid the rampant copying that goes on in this country, left out a major ingredient in his secret recipe to keep the Russians from copying and distributing Siberian Fried Chicken or some such. If you don’t tell anyone, I’ll tell you the ingredient: SALT! I can’t make up my mind if I need to make good on my threat to keep a salt shaker in my purse so that I can taste my food or if my American taste buds are so saturated with salt that it’s just going to take a while to lose my taste for it and start tasting food and not salt-flavored whatever it’s on.
You’d think with the lack of fast-food restaurants, the expense of the real restaurants with their the mostly disappointing offerings and the fact that we can’t get the same grocery products here as we can at home, that I would have lost some weight, which I haven’t. I guess the good news is that I haven’t gained any weight, which is amazing to me because Greg announced this week that he’s gained 20 lbs! I can’t see it on him, but I guess the scales don’t lie. I honestly don’t get it because we eat the same thing but you’re not going to hear me complaining!
Mary and the Giant Bottle of Beer
For quite a long time, people who don’t live in Texas have put to me the question about why Texans brag about stuff in Texas being so BIG. My friend from Alaska pointed out that Alaska was bigger than Texas, but you don’t hear Alaskans bragging about their bigness. My brother-in-law told me that he (and my sister, through osmosis, I guess) hated Texans in the Naval Academy because they were always bragging about how big stuff was in Texas. I actually didn’t pay too much attention to all that because I don’t take much of what anyone says seriously unless they’re throwing a personal insult my way. I guess, as a Texan, if I wanted to, I could take their criticisms of Texans as a personal insult, but hey, life is too short to go around fighting other people’s fights.
However, the subject of “Big” has come up a couple of times living in this country with 13 different time zones and I’m beginning to wonder if my fellow Texans should look outside their Texas-shaped box and see that there is a whole other world out there that doesn’t feel the need to assert their hugeness to everyone within hearing distance. So, as a Texan, I’m going to do my own bragging on big: “Hey, ya’ll, lookie here at this bottle of BEER!!!” I went to a new supermarket with my friend Mary and we were stupefied by the shelves filled with big bottles of beer being sold there. I looked online to see which country had the highest rate of alcoholism and/or cases of cirrhosis of the liver, but I couldn’t find any solid data and all the evidence pointed toward France. I’m actually surprised that it isn’t here, but I suppose it’s all just a matter of subjective perception.
FYI, in case you missed it, most stores, restaurants, supermarkets don’t take credit cards here and what you buy you have to pay with cash. I was with friends at Tvoi Dom (the Russian equivalent of Bed, Bath and Beyond) and I went to the ATM machine (they’re everywhere) to get out my $4,000 rubles to pay for the day’s purchases. Well, the ATM card took my card and kept my card. I panicked when I realized that I was in Russia, an ATM machine ate my card, I would have to find the bank number, speak to someone who most likely didn’t speak English and wait for a Russian technician to extricate my card. In a panic I started pushing the cancel button over and over again until Bobbie told me to stop pushing the buttons, I was probably mixing the machine up. I calmed down and decided to wait the machine out and about 2 minutes later it spat out my card. WHEW!
Kremlin Cathedral Fresco
- Tsarina Park
We had a extremely busy weekend and it’s taken a week to recover, so I apologise for getting a bit behind on the blog. This past three day weekend was compliments of “Men’s Day” or it was also called ”Red Army Day” which I suppose is a lot like “Veteran’s Day” in the U.S. It’s done a little differently in Russia (and a bit better in my humble opinion) in that in addition to the 3 day weekend, EVERY man is considered special that day and women wish men a happy men’s day or convey their appreciation to the men in their lives. The day was explained a little differently to Greg by a friend, who told him that it started when the men came home from war and ravished the females they had access to! We celebrated the weekend by Greg starting off Saturday morning going to “Man Heaven” aka Garbushka, which is a giant mall filled with small stores selling electronic equiptment, movies, etc. I went there once about a month ago and declared it “Susan Hell” and called new-shoe lameness and got to go home after what seemed like 4 hours but was probably more like 1 1/2. He went with a friend, Tim this time which got me off the hook for the first part of the Greg Red Army Day Fun-a-thon.
Sunday we accepted an invitation from Pavel and his friend Olga to go to Tsarina Park, which was the summer home of Catherine the Great. I was a little disappointed because everything was so new and asked why nothing was original. It was explained to me that once it was abandoned, nobody took care of it and everything was dirty and in ruins. Most of what remained was the outer castle walls and skeletons of the different buildings. Rather than trying to restore the orginal, it was reasoned that new was better and they just created a reproduction of the castle, gardens and various buildings. It was explained to me that this happens a lot in Russia and it’s very hard to find restoration experts that agree on how to restore a historical building, and it doesn’t make sense to go to that much trouble and expense (on an already extensive and expensive project) so “New” usually wins hands down. It was huge and beautiful and I couldn’t imagine how much money Catherine the Great spent on these projects. Oh, a little tidbit, I was told that Catherine the Great had a LOT of lovers and the next Tsar after her, disgusted by her rule and money spending, passed a law that said no more female Tsars!
On Monday we went on the Kremlin tour from hell. Seems that a good part of the Kremlin was closed for Men’s Day, specifically red square which would have been the main route to the area where the cathedrals were. So, we had to walk and walk and walk and WALK around to get to the area we wanted to see. Believe me, the Kremlin area is HUGE and we probably walked for at least 1 1/2 hours to get to start of the tour. Our poor tour guide was trying to make the walk interesting by feeding us little tidbits of information, but as we got tireder, our ability to feign interest wore thin and she eventually gave up. Once we got there, there was more walking and lots of stairs, but the reward was that, for the most part, the insides of the churches retained their original frescoes (albiet restored) and also the orginal buildings (again, restored, of course). I was told that the Kremlin was the orginal city of Moscow declared a city around 1140. There were the main buildings, churches and cathedrals, homes, etc, all surrounded by a wall which had the Moscow river as the main moat on most sides. Of course, Moscow grew outside the walls and after at time it changed from the main city to just the governing area and where the Tsar’s lived and ruled. It’s amazing how people associate the Kremlin with something negative. It’s simply the medival heart of the city which is now kept as a historical landmark and governing complex. We didn’t get to see quite a lot of it and focused on the churches and cathedrals. We want to go on the Armory tour sometime and will give you a report on that when we get to it.
Headless Horse
On Tuesday I took a trip with a group of ladies who have organized tours to interesting places. We went to the city of Sergiev Posad which is the city where the biggest Russian orthodox monastery is. I’d like to say we did something deep and meaningful however, we went for a Troika ride (draft horses pulling a traditional painted wooden sleigh) in the forest as the main event. This was my favorite because there was lots of FOOD and DRINK involved. We arrived at Sveta’s house and she greeted us with Blini’s, orange juice, champagne and hot tea. We fortified and then drove out to the forest where we were met by a husband and wife and were taken by sleigh out to a clearing in the forest where they had a camp fire going, log seats with woolen pads and they sat us around the fire and loaded our hot dog roasters and kept us filled on pickles, vodka, champagne and hot tea. A few of us took off our shoes and thawed our toes out by the fire and I actually singed my socks! I didn’t feel it because I had panty hose, woolen hose, silk socks, a pair of regular wool socks and a pair of thick Russian wool socks/boots. Those were the ones getting singed!
We went on another sleigh ride (one quite fast downhill) and then were taken out to the van, driven to Sveta’s house and she fed us a late lunch. It was a traditional dinner with plates of sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, green onions, parsley and dill. Sliced cheese and pastrami and pickled herring (a first for me). Then the BEST BORSCHT in the universe, and of course, more beverages. Someone had the big idea to go to the Monastery before we went home, but relaxed, full and sleepy I opted to stay in the van and I had a couple more slackers who fell in behind me. 15 minutes later the motivated ones staggered back to the van and said it was too big and too far and they changed their minds. I’m telling you, these Russians WALK for hours and think nothing of it. Anyway, it was so fun, we’ve decided to come back March 14th and take our husbands.
Fashion comments: In the first picture I had my wool beret all pulled down dorkey-like because my ears were FREEZING and I gave up trying to make a good appearance for just trying to warm my ears. In the horse sleigh ride I had on, literally, 5 layers of wool, silk, nylon, cashmere, down, etc and am looking a little slitty eyed from a combination of compression and vodka. I notice also that I’m slouched down in the seat. It was because the clothes layers were so thick, I couldn’t form a proper 90 degree angle to sit!
