The cat's kingdom

As I promised the day before on Facebook's fanpage today we're gonna talk about cats.

I love cats! They are the best creatures in the world... so egoistic, lazy and crafty. I'm giving Maurice a hard time whining all the time about getting one, but as much as he loves cats same as I do, he's still refusing me. He doesn't want to imprison the cat in the house, so the animal could not go out. After all living on the 3rd floor is not ideal for independent walks of a pet. Unless we'd teach it how to use a lift and an intercom.

In this situation we decided to befriend some cats from our neighborhood. A few-minute-walk from the hen house there's a little spot in the corner with some miserable flowers and sticks pretending to be plants. In this spot a small cat gang is often hanging out, laying between those sticks. Most of them is quite shy and not willing to play with us. They rather run away. However one red-hair creature finds us as an attractive target and everytime he sees us, he's running our way meowing laud like he wanted to say: "Where the hell have you been! I'm waiting here for soooo long for someone to pet me and rub my back! What a lousy service... now get to work you lazy servants!" and he clings to our legs like an ivy to the wall. Time for being stroke. 

We don't know whether the cats are homeless or not. We were a bit worried about them when the winter approached. The last visit at the cat's corner assured us, that the cats are doing just fine. They are well fed, they don't look like they're freezing, starving or not being taken care of. In general the dutch cats seem to be a bit... bigger. During the whole last year I haven't seen a single skinny cat. They clearly know how to take care of themselves (or being taken care of). They are also quite lazy and cheeky. In some of the neighborhoods there don't ever bother to rush with crossing the street. They expect (and apparently it works) the drivers to stop and wait till they deign to move their noble furry ass. Maybe someone is even gonna step out of the car and pet them?...

A typical dutch cat: well fed and not paying any attention

An interesting phenomenon is a really fat cat from a bar close by. He's so called kroeg kat, meaning a bar cat. What a great institution! A bar cat! He's spending there hours and he look just like Garfield. They are probably feeding him there with pieces of ham, sausage, maybe even bitterbollen and beer (I would not be surprised). Apparently these bar cats are quite popular in the Netherlands. This is what I mean! Each self-respecting should have a bar cat.

At the end I'd like to add one of my observations. It seems that the cat language is not international. Everytime I'm calling these furry animals, they're not responding. Like they don't even hear me. And then when Maurice is trying to lure one of my parent's cats in Poland, they are ignoring him exactly the same way. I can kind a understand them... The sounds that Maurice is producing to call them sounds like a very weird attempt of giving a juicy kiss. Maybe Maurice is not their type? Does it mean I'm also gonna have to learn the cat dutch language? ;))