Yesterday was a busy day, and though I didn’t feel 100% up to snuff, there were a number of tasks to attend to, the most important of which was walking Leon, the Hiking Tabby. But first, a few snaps of The Princess here in Dobrzyn.
Hili on the couch with me in one of her cute positions. How can you not want to rub that belly? (I did not resist.)
Sadly, sometimes Hili prefers to sleep with Cyrus the d*g rather than with me. When she does so, she takes over most of the d*g’s bed, as cats are wont to do. Here Cyrus is relegated to one end, while Hili takes up what I estimate to be 72% of the space:
While petting Her Highness, I detected an arthopodian lump in her neck. Andrzej and Malgorzata immediately checked to see if she had a tick, which she often picks up during her forest rambles. It was a tick, but a dead one, so it was left to fall out on its own.
A late breakfast included toast, sausage, cheese, and 3-minute soft-boiled eggs. (When I was young I used to be revolted at the thought of eating runny egg yolks, but now I love them. I used to feel the same way about beer and mustard):
Malgorzata produced a 30-year-old device from Sweden that’s used to decapitate soft-boiled eggs. Here’s the Egg Guillotine in use, before and after:
It produces a very neat cut:
It was then time for shopping in the village. On the way in, I stopped to photograph the fruit in the front yard. Here are some delicious apples:
And the quince are almost ripe, too. Malgorzata uses them to make a condiment—quince jelly—that accompanies meat dishes:
The assortment of local fruit and veg at the shop. We bought plums, and I visited the butcher nearby to buy Cyrus a beefsteak, for I didn’t bring him presents from the U.S.:
Sunflowers were on offer, too. People buy them to nom the seeds. Contrary to popular opinion, the number of sunflower seed “spirals” don’t always correspond up to a Fibonacci number. As Wikipedia notes:
It is often said that sunflowers and similar arrangements have 55 spirals in one direction and 89 in the other (or some other pair of adjacent Fibonacci numbers), but this is true only of one range of radii, typically the outermost and thus most conspicuous.
But many instances of natural “packing,” do, including artichoke flowers and the bracts of pine cones. You can’t count the spirals in this cropped shot, but you can see them:
At 1 p.m. we headed for Włocławek (go here to hear the pronunciation, which is like “Vote-sva-vek”). That town is the home of Leon the Hiking Cat (see here for reports on his mountain hikes) and his staff: Elzbieta and Andrzej #2 (the same name as the Andrzej #1 with whom I’m staying). We were promised tea and the chance to take Leon for a walk in the woods.
I bought a small can of fancy cat food to offer to Leon, but, as you see, he was dubious about my gift:
Leon is a beautiful tabby, very dark and with almost Bengal-cat-like blotches on his front legs. Here he’s resting in his favorite spot, a cardboard box on the plant-filled porch. He once escaped from the porch by squeezing through the grate, and his distraught owners found him eight hours later. Now the porch is secured against cat escape. Note the striking vertical lines over his eyes, which look almost like exclamation marks:
I made friends with him easily (something I’m told is rare for strangers), and he let me pick him up:
“Tea”, as usual in Poland, was an elaborate spread. Here is Elzbieta, Andrzej #1 and Malgorzata at the table. There was a delicious salad with chicken and cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, dried pears, an assortment of cheeses, bread sprinkled with olive oil, and two kinds of desserts. Elzbieta, who teaches Polish in the local schools, is a terrific cook.
Here are the two homemade desserts: plum cake with almonds (left) and a cake made with apples, cottage cheese, and honey (right). They were great, and about as healthy as desserts can be:
After tea Andrzej #2 offered me a glass of his homemade cordials, which are made by steeping fresh fruit with sugar, vodka, and pure ethanol. This one was cherry, which was delicious, and I also had blackcurrant. When we left, Andrzej #2 kindly gave me a bottle of his cherry cordial to take home.
Then it was time for the Big Event: taking Leon for a walk in the woods. I was allowed to sit in the front passenger seat, for that’s where Leon rides in the car. He was not in the least scared, but sat in my lap and looked out the window. We also had a snuggle or two:
We went to a lake in the nearby woods where there were swans (which we saw) as well as beavers and cervids (which we didn’t). Elzbieta put Leon on his harness and leash before handing him over to me:
The next four photos were taken by Elzbieta or Andrzej #2, who posted them on Elzbieta’s Facebook page as a Leon monologue. Here’s a screenshot of the original caption and the automatic translation (remember, these are supposed to be Leon’s words):
How cute! I was honored to hold his leash.
Walking a cat isn’t like walking a d*g, though I have scant experience with both. Leon tended to walk on the path in front of me, which was amazing, but from time to time he’d deviate from the trail to either sniff something interesting or go after potential prey (we didn’t see any, but he seemed to):
Leon was fond of walking along the logs by the lake:
I had the privilege of walking Leon for the entire hike, which was great fun. On the way home, Malgorzata pointed out to me Elzbieta’s car:
On the way home we passed four towns with weird names. Apparently these names stem from feudal times, when the landowner had the right to name the villages in his fiefdom. I guess the local doyen didn’t much like the villages near Dobrzyn nad Wisla (which itself means “nice place on the Vistula”), as four of them had strange names. I took pictures of the signs, though I missed a photo of the town called “Hideous”):
This, in Polish, means “Angry With Oneself” (top):
“Village of Bastard Children” (can you imagine a town in America with that name?):
“Village of Spies”:
“Scary”:
Finally, at home I remembered Cyrus’s beefsteak. We cut it up into bits, and I put them into his bowl. By the time I sat down at the table, about five seconds later, it was gone—down the d*g’s gullet in a flash. I was glad to have given the d*g something he enjoyed, but unsure if he really enjoyed it. After all, how much can you enjoy food if you just inhale it rather than chew it?
I love the Egg Guillotine! And the cherry drink looks delicious. Don’t forget to watch the Lunar eclipse tonight!
Äggiljotin or more often I think äggsnoppare seems to have been popular from the 1950s on. [ http://dellenportalen.se/prylar-2/prylen-2014/ ; item #34.] They are still evolving, and you can get them on the web. [ http://www.kitchenstore.se/koksverktyg/aggiga-prylar/masterclass-aggtoppare.html ; I guess there are many more less expensive ones.]
“Snoppare” derives from a word which describes a pointy part, the same meaning as for a guillotine in other words, which as you can guess is also a slang term for male genitalia. [ http://runeberg.org/saol/11-6/0531.html ] Frankly I would be more anxious about my fingers.
Can I get them at my local IKEA?
I’m glad you got to experience a cat hike! I hope it’ll inspire you to provide a cat of your own with lots and lots and lots of hikes.
b&
I am thoroughly enjoying your adventures, and Leon does look to be a handsome fellow. I have never been able to have a cat that would accept a leash.
I hope you are feeling better & that your talk goes well. please pass on cuddles to the Polish Princess and give Cyrus an ear rub from me too.
I love the look on Leon’s face as he contemplates accepting the Fancy Feast gift.
I also love those town names! I think my favourite is the “bastard children” one.
Oh and dogs often just “wolf” down food – at least Labradors, who are easily food motivated, do. When I adopted my dogs, they would need to be hand fed – no more I often cut food into small pieces so Kala doesn’t swallow it all up at once. I have trained her not to eat food on the ground or in her bowl without first looking at you and waiting for you to say “okay” because she is 100 pounds and I don’t want a giant dog lusting after food to kncok me over. So, she is very polite about her food.
Our current d*g has always been very polite and deferential about food, which is odd since he is very high energy and go go go about everything else. If I even wander near his bowl while he’s eating he quickly moves away in case I want to have some.
My dog is high stim and high energy as well though she is not at all possessive about her food. I have to put training in place to give her some self control. When I got her, she pretty much had no self control at all. She would have been a Marley dog for sure.
We are rather puzzled about our dog, Percy. He has always been absolutely terrifying when he even sees another dog (we have never been able to mollify him on that), and wow does he want to hunt, which I think is a feature of his breed. But in addition to the food thing, he never ever chews things except his toys and rawhide bones. He seems to ‘get it’, and I have no idea why.
My dog wants to fight some dogs and likes others. I have no idea how she sizes them up but because I can never tell how she will react, I am cautious with her because it’s frankly embarrassing if she growls at a nice dog. She never wants to kill them but she does want to fight them. I think part of it is she is a dominant dog and if she sees others that she feels challenges her dominance she wants to put them in their place. She also jumps on dogs and holds them down – I’ve seen her do that with high energy or nervous dogs.
One way to prevent food wolfing is to add a little water to the bowl. That makes the solid bits slosh around making it difficult for dogs to grab more than a few pieces at a time.
My dog isn’t too bad when eating her kibbles. It’s more that she will inhale treats or simply swallow them. I actually taught her to chew on command. I said “chew” and then showed her what chewing looks like. She actually does that now.
Oh hell, we are all forgetting it’s d*g. I hope Ceiling Cat is merciful…
Congrats on teaching your pup manners!
Interestingly enough, I add a lot of water to Baihu’s food bowl. The reasoning and function has changed with time, and it’s never been to prevent him from inhaling his food. His food is frozen raw meat; I pour hot (near-boiling) water over it to defrost it, and also to warm it up (he much prefers hot meals to cold), and also to make sure he gets lots of water (he often, but not always, licks the bowl dry).
If you’re feeding kibble, I’d recommend against adding water unless the animal is going to eat the food all at once. But I’d also recommend against kibble. Any other kind of food…adding water is a really good idea on many levels.
b&
It looks like you had a lovely day!
That egg decapitator looks like a modified inquistion torture device.
Just another example of how religion has improved life, even for atheists.
/sarc (is this really necessary?)
Probably. Some people are just too literal.
😀
(My real answer is, “I hope not!”)
Such a nice setting to relax and enjoy the weather, the food, friends and pets. There is a place similar to that some claim is the reward at the end of a good life.
The apples look very nice. Do they spray them? Here in the US, apples that are not sprayed (or perhaps treated with lures, if that works) will suffer from the apple maggot (Rhagoletis pomonella) and not look nearly as nice.
As you may know, this insect emerged in the 1800s from a fly whose maggots feed on the native hawthorn, possibly an example of the ongoing divergence of a new species. I wonder if this pest has since been introduced outside North America.
“As you may know”
I should have looked in the index of Speciation first. :/
I’ve made a similar liqueur using alcohol, sugar and concord grapes from the vine out back. It tastes like a grape Jolly Rancher. I’ve had poor luck in using cherries. Perhaps one must use pie cherries rather than sweet ones.
Yes, it’s essential to use the sour cherries for alcoholic drinks.
okay, that is my mission for next year. Thank you!
My mother used to steep dried apricots in a sugar-vodka concoction to create something that the writer of the recipe misleadingly called “apricot brandy”. She assembled the ingredients in a large pail with a lid, and let it sit in the back of the pantry for a couple of months. The result was delicious, but best sampled with care; it was very strong. The soft apricots that came out were to die for (again, best sampled sparingly though).
Jerry, your posts about your hospitable friends in Poland are always enjoyable. Hili and Leon don’t know how good they have it, having such lovely staff. Cyrus should give them appreciation lessons.
Doesn’t it make you want to move to Poland?
These posts are just about my favourite reading material. If Andrzej and Malgorzata ever produce a cookbook I’m in!
“Sadly, sometimes Hili prefers to sleep with Cyrus the d*g rather than with me.”
All I can think of is “just desserts” for an educated man like yourself who can’t spell “dog” correctly! Although I must admit I was touched by your kindness to Cyrus, buying him some beef to enjoy. I have to add, if you saw him licking his lips prior to or after “wolfing” down his food, you can rest assured he enjoyed it.
Way to go, Jerry, bringing American decadence to those hard-working Polish cats!
And a pro tip to anyone whose cats are averse to their meds.
I’ve found that same little-can cat food [Fancy Feast] is the only means I have to get Sierra’s thyroid meds past her inspection. One-third of a can of chicken-liver FF nicely absorbs a crushed 5 mg pill
Of course Cyrus enjoyed the delicious beefsteak! Think about how much our enjoyment of food is related to the smells, in addition to the tastes. Now multiply that by a factor of 10 (at least), to account for the superior olfactory abilities of dogs … Cyrus was enjoying that beefsteak even as it was being unwrapped and cut up.
Nice photos, thanks for sharing your time in Dobrzyn.
You are looking very fit, sir. It’s good to see!
Yes, some great shots of our dear leader, there!
He looks nice accessorized with a cat.