My friend Malgorzata in Poland was visited by her friend, a local teacher who brought along a young kitten whom she had rescued and decided to give a forever home. The kitten, who had been abandoned, was skinny and ill, but the vet is now fixing him right up, and he’ll be fine.
The teacher has named the kitten Leon, and, in an imitation of the Hili dialogues, posts a Leon Monologue every few days on her Facebook page. I won’t put them up regularly, as of course the Princess gets pride of place, but I thought the first three deserved to be shown. So here’s Leon with his questions and plaints (also in Polish), beginning with Malgorzata’s explanation:
His human’s name is Elzbieta Wierzbicka and she teaches Polish language in the school in Dobrzyn. She had another cat, also rescued but as an adult, Bruno, who went for a walk a few months ago and never returned. After looking for him everywhere possible she acknowledged the sad fact that Bruno will not return. Then she saw an ad that animal shelter has a 7-week-old abandoned kitten who needs special care and she took him.
1.When I just sit, do I still grow?
Gdy tak sobie siedzę, to rosnę?
*******
2.Do not call me “my little one”. I’m 9 weeks old!
Nie mów do mnie “Mój Malutki”. Mam już 9 tygodni!
*******
3.What? You didn’t buy the liver?
Jak to, nie kupiłaś wątróbki?
Love
M.
He’s a beautiful kitten!
He’s a little cutie.
Very nicely done, Elzbieta has a lovely sense of humor!
You mean Leon has a lovely sense of humor, of course.
Wow, Mr Spock’s got nothing on this kitten!
Very handsome.
What a cute kitty! I like the last picture best as he is giving attitude.
What a great face!
Dear Mr Coyne,
I can’t find an e-mail address, so I’ll write this as a comment. You may ignore it anyway, since I have a few things to say about the Ukraine conflict, and since I will not be doing it while waving the US flag and shouting “Putin=Hitler”. I read about how you are apparently receiving nasty phone calls from ‘pro-Russians’, and want to assure you I’m not one of those morons. But I do feel the need to comment because according to your own predictions, Ukraine should already have been a part of Russia by now. Yes I know, it can still happen. ‘Lebensraum’ right? Well, let me make a prediction myself: it won’t happen. And thinking otherwise illustrates how many people misunderstand Russia’s intentions and motives for acting the way it does. If you really think this is all about ‘Lebensraum’ then you really miss the point. It’s a gross simplification of reality and it’s this attitude, widely spread in Western media, that could very well lead to more than just a cold war. Not the Russian actions, but our interpretation of and response to those actions may make this conflict a global one.
I’m not a Putin fan, nor am I Russian. I’m from The Netherlands. But what bothers me is the uninformed (media driven) anti-Russia hysteria in which you, on this blog, also participate. You have made it very clear on this blog that you, for some reason, find it almost impossible to listen to and let alone consider some of the points that people make when they try to see or explain the Ukraine conflict from a Russian point of view.
Just like a major Dutch newspaper recently did, you seem quick to classify people with other points of view as “pro-Kremlin trolls’ or “paid by the Kremlin”, who can safely be ignored. It reminds me of how people who are critical towards Islam (including myself) are being silenced by a word like ‘Islamophobia’. As if it were some kind of irrational mental illness to have a different opinion. Even at the height of the Cold War, the two sides did not approach each other with such verbal hostility.
Easy as it may be to just classify people who try to counterbalance and see this conflict from a Russian perspective as “Putin-lovers” or whatever some like to call them, I expected more nuance and critical thinking from a rational, intelligent scientist like yourself. I’m an atheist, I loved your book about evolution and I love the society and freedoms we built in ‘the West’. But I also believe that conflicts, the Ukraine conflict included, are often not as black and white as you seem to want to believe. But somehow you come across as being unwilling, unable, or maybe just too uninformed to even try to see things from a different point of view. This one for example: http://www.karelvanwolferen.com/44-ukraine-corrupted-journalism-atlanticist-faith-9aug-2014/
It’s amazing to me that even after the horrible, pointless and unjust wars that the US has already waged in this century, many people are still so willing to gobble up everything we’re being told about our latest enemy: Russia. I’m not saying everything Russia is doing at the moment is right. But we have to realize that the West itself is far from totally innocent in this crisis and unfortunately to a rather large extend responsible for creating the enemy it so desperately seems to want. And Russia, especially under Putin, is more than happy to be our enemy, if that is what we want.
I’ll end with one of your quotes from April of this year: “but at least we must start by admitting that this situation was created, engineered, and manipulated by a group of Russian warmongers who will stop at nothing to take over another sovereign nation.”
If you really believe that this accurately sums up how it all started, I can only hope that you can, in the future, take some pleasure in being proved wrong.
Please find a more appropriate place to put this comment. Really, on a kitten post?
And you will apologize for this remark:
I expected more nuance and critical thinking from a rational, intelligent scientist like yourself.
That violates the Roolz. If you don’t apologize (and you could have made your point without insulting the host), you will never post here again. And I mean a real apology–not one that just reiterates what you already said.
What a super sweet kitteh. Our new rescue three-month-old kitten, Dirac, resembles Leon a lot!
Leon seems to take “catitude” lessons from Hili.
The liver comment made me laugh, my late cat loved raw liver. He really enjoyed it when I cut the liver in mouse sized bits. He would circle his food dish, grab a piece and then run off into a corner under the kitchen table. Of course he had to check whether the liver was really dead and gave it a quick shake. Then he would munch his prey. Repeat until liver was gone.
It made quite a mess in the kitchen, but since he enjoyed himself so much I would feed him liver about once a month.
Beautiful kitten, sort of “tabbysinnian” markings. Looks intelligent, too. He’s obviously doing well in his new home!
My Leon is a tiny black shorthair, nearly 14 years old. I wrote about him a couple of years ago on my blog:
http://ironwing.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/happy-leon-day/
Your Leon is lovely! (with or without fangs;-)
Polish Leon has gorgeous markings on his front legs.
I agree! I love black fur though!
Your Leon is a doll, and I loved his story!
Lucky Leon! He’s a good-looking cat. Glad to know he’s found his forever home.
…any chance we’ll get any Hili-Leon…um…trialogues?
b&
Perhaps Leon asking Hili how to be worshipped properly by humans, and how to interpret weird behaviour by the human staff…
Cute!
Just a few months old and already an internet star! What a photogenic little guy he is, too–and he speaks his mind!
That is one cute kittah. But whenever I hear the name Leon I think of the character from the movie Blade Runner:
Leon: “My mother? I’ll tell you about my mother…”
Hopefully this Leon isn’t packing heat. 😉
Whenever I think of Bladerunner, I think of the Voigt-Kampff Test. I once asked a narcissistic boss if they made him take one when he took a test that revealed he had low empathy (and he was bragging about it). He didn’t get it and I was walking the line of triggering his narcissistic rage but he didn’t get mad mostly, I think, because his lack of empathy meant he didn’t know I was mocking him.