Can you believe it’s been FIVE years since Jacoby got his United Bamboo retro suit that he, famously, wore as JFK to my Marilyn?
But it’s true…it was five years ago this year that I got Jake his “Don Draper” suit.
My, how time has flown, right?
Can you believe it’s been that long since Jake got his cool suit?
Because I can’t.
It seems like he’s always had it…and yet, at the same time, it feels like he just got it. Time is funny that way, isn’t it?
Since it’s gotten colder outside, we’ve been able to store food outside on the balcony. Last night, we used that to our advantage and defrosted our freezer.
Not without help, of course. All the cats were there, of course, because they know food is involved with the big white cold box in the kitchen, but only one thought it would be a good idea to hop inside.
I wonder what he’s going to do when he sees snow for the first time.
This is a little drawing Kalle did whilst we were on a train home from Jönköping using my iPad Pro and Procreate.
I set him up with a photo of Jacoby to start with.
Then we set it to 75% opaqueness, and he worked on it. It’s a little wobbly, because the train was, of course, moving. I keep asking him to finish it, because I think it has a lot of potential. I really like it.
Even though we have five cats living with us, there are moments where you wonder where all the cats are.
There’s a time of day when all the cats are napping. Sometimes you see them…sometimes you don’t.
Izaak usually naps close to me…although maybe not so much when I start taking photos of him.
Alfred tends to nap on the sofa with Zak on the sofa.
Freddy is a simple cat with simple needs.
Mostly, he just needs a good place to nap.
Angel loves the little brown bed.
She naps in it almost everyday.
Even though a certain Singapura tries to nap in there with her.
Meanwhile, Lorelai has discovered the radiator bed.
She spends a lot of time there.
Can you blame her? It’s comfy and it’s warm.
Who wouldn’t want to nap in a warm radiator bed, though, right?
Last, but obviously not least, we have Jacoby. He loves to sleep on our bed.
He usually digs himself a nest under our comforters…but today he decided to nest on top of the blankets.
Even so, he usually sleeps on my side of the bed. How does he know that?
It’s always a huge event in our house when I cut up meat.
It’s one of the best ways to get all five of them together.
They are so fascinated by it…and of course, hopeful for a scrap or two.
It’s a bit like feeding a tank of piranhas, to be honest.
Cats – at least Abys and Singas – swarm.
Alfred is at his most athletic when there’s raw meat involved.
But still photos cannot capture the mayhem properly…so here is a little movie Björn made of the Famous Hellqvist Dancing Cats. Click the image to view it in Flickr.
On Thursday, I posted about our early Thanksgiving goose. But I saved the best part for today…and of course, the best part of any bird is the neck! Usually, I bake it alongside the bird and eat it myself as a snack. But since Izaak loves his chicken necks so much, I decided to let him have the goose neck.
I know these photos are blurry, but look how excited he is!
Gimme!
The neck was nearly as long as he is!
Lorelai and Alfred were very interested in the neck, too.
Rory was willing to dance for it!
It’s hard to see in the photos, but Zak is really pulling on the bone! He’s like a little terrier.
He’s growling, too.
The growling got louder when Freddy couldn’t stand it any more and hopped up on the counter to get closer to the meat.
You have to admire Freddy’s chutzpah, though…despite the growling from the little Singa, he still tried to take the neck.
Finally, I cut off a small piece of the neck and gave it to Zak.
I always give him his neck in the house, so he can eat them without being bothered by the others…and also so it doesn’t get dragged all over the house.
However, it turned out that, excited as Zak was about the prospect of the neck…he doesn’t like goose necks. So, when I opened the house to let him out, Rory stole the neck…
…and proceeded to eat it in the living room.
So much for not having raw meat dragged all over the house, eh?
Facebook, in its infinite algorithmic wisdom, reminded me this morning of Jacoby’s invitation to be Cat of the Year at the famed Westchester Cat Show and the fashion show where Jake first wore his fabulous Turkey costume.
Hard to believe that it’s been FIVE YEARS since then! So much has happened since then!
Jake clearly thought he looked amazing in his festive outfit.
The beautiful cat costume, made by Golden CouturePet, was only meant to be a loaner for the fashion show…
…But it seemed to be custom-made for Jake. The minute he put it on, it was his. The creator agreed and gave it to Jake as a gift because it suited him so very well.
Jake being named Cat of the Year was such an incredible honour.
We will never forget it.
And we have this sparkly confection of a costume to remember it by. Thank you, Westchester Feline Club!
Today is Thanksgiving back in the States, but we actually had our “Thanksgiving” dinner last Thursday.
The reason for this is more utilitarian than anything else. Since last year, I have wanted to cook a goose. In Sweden, geese are traditionally cooked for St. Martin’s Day, celebrated on 10 November. I didn’t know this last year when I first saw whole geese in the shops last year…I wanted to get one for Christmas, but by the time I was ready to buy one, they were nowhere to be found! Because they are only available in early November.
This year, I was on full alert for geese, checking all the stores for geese. And I found them at two stores. I snagged a better deal than the above for the one we had for our early Thanksgiving, but Björn (who works at the same mall that the supermarket I took that photo at is in) got a second one we froze for a third of the price. But for the first one, I wanted to cook it fresh, not frozen, and the use-by date was the 15th…so, we decided to have Thanksgiving a week early.
I have cooked whole chickens, turkeys, pheasants and ducks, but never a goose. I followed my usual Chinese-style, boiling-water-to-tighten-the-skin trick, and I even found a kick-ass Asian-style roast goose recipe.
The thing to keep in mind, here, is that the goose weighed 5kg. Of our five cats, the one who weighs the closest to that is Alfred, who, the last time I weighed them all, came in at 4.7kg. Yep, that’s right…Freddy officially weighs more than Jacoby!
None of the cats was the least bit intimidated by food that weighed more than they did.
Freddy even tried to take a bite!
Lorelai is our smallest cat – smaller even than Izaak! She only weighed 2.4kg the last time I weighed them. She was very impressed with the goose.
Another trick I use when cooking birds is to start cooking it breast down (upside-down from the way people usually roast a turkey). This way, the juices run DOWN into the breast and keeps it moist. Then for the last hour, the bird is flipped over so the breast can brown. Goose cooks a lot faster than turkey, though, which I was not expecting. I’ll know better next time.
Zak was very interested in the cooked goose.
So was Jake.
Cheeky bugger actually licked it!
I don’t cook my birds with stuffing per se, but I do stuff the inside cavity with ginger, garlic, scallions, and, for this particular recipe, orange wedges. It adds flavour to the meat from the inside. I also boil them down with the carcass when I make stock, which makes for very tasty soups.
The meat inside is so much richer and more flavourful than turkey…but overall, it seems there is less edible meat per kilo than a similar-sized turkey. All in all, an interesting exercise. I can’t wait to try it again!
Today I needed to find the Wi-Fi password to our router, which, for some reason, lives only in a little cookie note pad from the Danish Flying Tiger store.
Yeah, we really need to record that in a more permanent place.
But I came across a little sketch I had done. Not sure when I did it, or why I did it in a little round cookie-shaped notepad in blue ink…but I think it’s Jacoby and Alfred.
Izaak will be 10 months old next Monday.
(This is Zak)
He has turned into a husky, burly cat. I call him my “little sausage.”
(This is Logan)
He is much more burly than Logan was at the same age.
(This is Logan)
But that’s honestly the only way that Zak is ahead of Logan, developmentally speaking.
(This is Logan)
When Logan was the same age as Zak, Logan had to wear diapers because he was marking his territory like a tomcat. He also paced around the apartment, yowling.
(This is Logan)
Logan seems to have been a faster developer than Zak is.
(This is Zak)
Zak is one week shy of 10 months old, and he is showing zero signs of male maturity. No inappropriate play mounting (which Alfred was showing with Logan at seven months of age), no pacing and yowling, and no random peeing. His pee doesn’t even smell strong, like a tomcat’s!
(This is Zak)
Not that I’m complaining, exactly…and I do want to wait as long as possible before getting him his Suprelorin implant…but it’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You know it’s going to happen…but when?
After collecting Alfred, we boarded our train and got settled in our seats. We folded up the stroller, and Jacoby sat on the seat next to Kalle.
We set Freddy’s carrier on the table and opened it up.
“Are you sure about this?”
Freddy was quick to get out and explore the train and his new humans.
He was fascinated by the landscape speeding past.
Then he went to “help” Kalle on his laptop.
Like, literally on his laptop.
That’s our Freddy, always helpful, right from the very start.
Some things don’t change.
Then he decided to lie awkwardly all over the table, taking up as much space a he possibly could. He’s still really good at this, too.
Finally, he started to get drowsy…and settled down on my lap to sleep the rest of the trip. Awww…
Here’s a little video I shot of Freddy’s first train trip.
Jacoby, Björn, Kalle and I had spent a long weekend in Tallinn for a cat show. On the way back, on 6 June, we met Karin at Stockholm’s Centralstation to collect Alfred.
We got there a little early, so we had lunch in the food court.
Jacoby was his usual well-behaved self, as always.
Titti and Emma also met us at the station so they could see Jake and Kalle, and also meet Freddy. Tittl and Kalle stayed at the table with the luggage whilst Björn, Emma, Jake and I went to the parking lot to meet Karin with Freddy.
We walked to Karin’s little yellow car excitedly.
Karin brought Freddy out and introduced him to Jake.
Which went…
…about as well as could be expected.
Karin, Freddy and I sat in the car whilst we dealt with Freddy’s paperwork.
Emma helped keep Freddy amused.
We didn’t think Jake was ready to share his stroller, so we put Freddy into a carrier, said goodby to Karin, and went to rejoin Kalle and Titti.
Back in the station, we all got acquainted whilst waiting for train back to Skövde.
Having gotten his hissing out of the way, Jake was very curious about the newcomer.
This time, Freddy was the one hissing. Which I found a bit surprising, since Freddy had four littermates and grew up with three adult cats. I didn’t expect him to be so defensive.
I think Jake was a little taken aback by Freddy’s reaction, too. They had words.
Jake broke the spell with a nose-lick.
By that time, our train was ready to depart, so we packed Freddy into the carrier with his baby blanket and headed out to the platform, homeward bound.
Of course Jacoby is a Red Sox fan – his very name commemorates a magic moment at Fenway that happened 12 days after he was born. But what we tend to forget is that Gun-Hee watched them win the World Series, too.
He was a pretty good fan, too. Look – he knows where the ball is!
He was fascinated with the players, too.
Ummm…maybe a little too fascinated?
He was so adorable, you didn’t really even mind that he was blocking your view of the game. Of course, we didn’t have the Red Sox wardrobe that Jake later acquired, but that didn’t make him any less of a fan.
A couple of years ago, Sherry sent me a Dean Russo Abyssinian print cushion cover for Christmas. We thought it would be the perfect cover for Pyret’s pillow…and she agreed.
Sometimes, though, she sat next to it, rather than on it. Not sure why, but okay…
Occasionally, when Pyret was sleeping in one of her other spots, Jacoby would commandeer her pillow, but he was the only cat who ever slept on it apart from Pyret. After she died, nobody slept on it. For months, it just sat there unused.
Until recently. In the past month or so, Alfred has taken to using Pyret’s pillow. It’s near the radiator, so perhaps that’s a factor, or maybe it’s to do with the afternoon sun…but I have no idea why it sat empty for so long, or why Freddy decided to start napping there.
Cats are so inscrutible.
Okay, not exactly a cartoon, but I see this sticker grafitti stuck to a wall-ashtray everytime I go to Commerce downtown. It’s just so happy! I mean, I know it’s grafitti…but it’s adorable.
They also hit a postbox with a Sharpie, and this time Cat Mob has a friend. I really love his tail. I have no idea what or who Cat Mob is, but I appreciate their mascots.
I collected Izaak from Arlanda airport in Stockholm on 20 June. On 26 June, his five-month birthday, we went to the vet for a wellness check.
Of course, the first part of the trip was taking the bus. Zak rocked that part of the exercise.
He was also pretty okay in the vet’s waiting room.
And in the exam room as well.
Zak was quite brave on the vet’s examination table.
Zak was checked out thouroughly…and he was fine. The vet thought he was two months younger than he actually was…but, other than that…
No, really, Zak…you were fine.
Okay, take my word for it.
On the way back to our apartment from the bus, I took Izaak to check out our local pet store.
Zak had a lot of fun playing with the cat beds on display.
He also did a really great job walking outside on his leash, even at his age.
I mean, only five months old, and he’s already awesome at walking on a leash.
Today is the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, the end of the Great War To End All Wars. As I recalled a few years ago, this holiday is observed somewhat differently in Canada than it is in the United States.
Apparently, the 100th anniversary observance of this occasion is handled VERY differently by Canada and the US, as evidenced by the two countries’ respective leaders. I’ve never been prouder to hold Canadian citizenship.
The Daily Abyssinian...and Singapura 