The adventures of DaddyBird and Kangayayaroo as they move from the United Arab Emirates to Shanghai, China, and venture to explore the Eastern hemisphere from there.
Someone thought that black marble was a cool idea for a bathroom sink counter. Clearly, this person had a maid who could spend her days cleaning it. They probably didn’t have two cats who insist on getting up on the counter to drink.
In addition to making footprints all over the counter, Oliver likes to put his paw in the water bowl and fling water drops all over the mirror. I spent Friday thoroughly cleaning two bathrooms. Had to take a picture so I can look back and remember how nice it looked for a few minutes.
Daddybird, being a very lucky man married to a woman who knows where to shop and what to buy, got this for Christmas. And, as you can see, the castle is sometimes under the attack of a dragon.The dragons are now forbidden to get up on the table, but is it a hard lesson to learn. They do like to chew on the trees.
The castle is foam with interlocking pieces. Pretty cool toy. Of course, he wants another set so he can combine and make a bigger castle. Hmm… it’s already taking over my sewing table.
Oliver is not the brightest bulb. I heard him playing noisily with the bag for a long time. I finally looked to see what was going on and discovered he had his head stuck through the handle.
We ate at a Turkish restaurant which had some of the best freshly made bread we’ve had, yet. There was one piece left so we brought it home just for Oliver. He can be quiet and happy. He just needs the right toy.
Notice how my camera’s autofocus has trouble dealing with a white cat on a white background?
We have another new favorite restaurant. This one is on Al Muteena street not far from our apartment. It is a Arabic food restaurant, but our waiter is Tunisian and loves to practice his English on us. He is very interesting and amusing. He gives us a hard time if we don’t come every few days. He counts and tells us if he knew where we lived he would have come to check on us. Our first time at the restaurant I tried to order “fool” which is a bean dish, but he told me “No, no good…Egyptian…you don’t want.” So, I guess I’ll never get to test it for myself. Not that I’ve had enough fool to know good from bad. I also ordered an avocado shake for my drink. He was taken aback by this and warned me that it is a “strong drink.” It turned out to be heavenly. It is an avocado smoothy with a dollup of cream and blanched almonds. Yummy! I finished it off and he was impressed by that. So, now I don’t have to tell him what drink I want. He knows.
Like all restaurants with outdoor seating, this one had a stray hanging around to clean up any scraps. This is the healthiest street cat we’ve seen. From a cursory examination, it appeared to be a female, although she must have been spade. She had a sweet little voice, so we we dallied with the idea of exchanging Oliver for her. But, upon interviewing her, we found she lacked certain qualifications. She doesn’t play fetch. She probably wouldn’t let me cradle her like a baby.
When we got home, we gave Oliver the new toy we picked up at the pharmacy. (Yes, we get our cat toys at the pharmacy because he likes gel toe cushions.) He entertained us greatly reveling in his new toy. So, we’ll keep the noisy little knothead.
So, when we complain about Oliver, this is what we are complaining about. He does this at any time of day or night. No real reason other than he is bored and wants to be entertained. Even his playmate Bert gets tired of him and goes off to hide from him, especially when he is acting like this. We have tried “water therapy,” (by which I mean squirting him with a water spray bottle) and he does not make the connection between being sprayed and being noisy. Distraction or locking him in another room are the only working responses to date. If it weren’t for the thick concrete walls of our apartment building we would have been thrown out for noise disturbance by now.
The other day, while out and about in our area of town, Deira, I passed a small bakery. This was an old style bakery that produces large flatbreads, the bakers sitting on top of the tile-covered oven that took up the front room of the bakery and reaching down into the oven through a round hole in the top to place the pads of dough and remove the finished pieces of bread. You can buy large rounds of bread that have literally come ‘straight out of the oven’ right there from the bakers for 1 dirham each. They smell and taste wonderful, of course. (There are few of these bakeries around. I’ll try to do a blog post about them soon.)
I bought several pieces and headed home to include them in that night’s dinner. They were so hot that I thought that they might melt the plastic bag that they were put in before they were handed to me. Even after walking the several blocks back to our apartment the bread was still very warm and fragrant. I set it on the counter while I quickly cooked some mildly spiced chicken to pair with it.
Our cats, Oliver and Bert, lingered in the kitchen while I worked, which was not at all unusual. They like to be close and watch what I’m up to most of the time anyway, but food preparation is even more interesting than average, of course, especially when chicken is involved. So their intense interest in the process was no surprise. A surprise was still in store for me though.
I had turned away from my task for a few moment to do something else, when there was a noise from the cooking area. This wasn’t overly unusual either, as the cats- Oliver in particular- will sometimes try go where they are not allowed if left unsupervised. I turned back just in time to see Oliver making his escape, not with a piece of chicken, but with a whole flatbread dangling from his mouth. He had managed to grab it in the middle so it folded in half, which was lucky for him as it would otherwise have been to large for him to not end up stepping on as he retreated.
He bolted into the other room and promptly dropped the bread on the floor and started tearing off little pieces of it to eat. And to play with as well, of course. Children may be told not to play with their food, but there’s certainly no telling that to a cat with any result. I’m sure that food must taste better to a cat after it’s been properly subdued.
The bread was a bit too soiled by this point to consider repossessing, and the incident was so humorous that I thought Oliver deserved his ill-gotten gain, so I left it to him. Bert seemed to be enjoying it as well, so it was bread for the whole family that night. It was much too large for a cat, or even two, to eat all of, so it remained on object of both play and snacking for the rest of the evening. Later on I got some video of this, which is cute enough to share.
The last couple of weeks Daddybird has been walking around the neighborhood doing some investigative reporting for Shufflegazine. In the process, he has taken some very interesting pictures. My favorite is
DaddyBird says: There’s a publicly available gallery set up for the cat pictures on my Facebook page. (You don’t need a Facebook account to see it.) It’s HERE.
Oliver and Bert are the best of buds, most of the time. Sometimes Bert gets tired of Oliver and disappears into a hiding place to get away from him. This is one of their chummier moments. They usually lick each other for a while and then the biting and wrestling begins. The video begins right in the middle of a big yawn by Bert. Not intentional. Don’t let it scare you off.
Someone thought that black marble was a cool idea for a bathroom sink counter. Clearly, this person had a maid who could spend her days cleaning it. They probably didn’t have two cats who insist on getting up on the counter to drink.
Living the Travel Channel 