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“Be mindful. Be grateful. Be positive. Be true. Be kind.”

XPerceniol

By XPerceniol
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AstroSkipper

AstroSkipper

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, mina7601 said:
15 hours ago, AstroSkipper said:

But, woe betide if you do! :)

What does this word mean? (the bolded text)

"But, woe betide if you do!" means "But, woe to the one who does it!" or "But, don't you dare!°. :)

Edited by AstroSkipper
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mina7601

mina7601

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Posted
2 minutes ago, AstroSkipper said:

No, it's English.

Oh, sorry. Google Translate detected the "woe betide" sentence as Frisian. But, I did use DeepL translator as you said, and translated "woe betide so." and accurate results came up, which is, it's English indeed as you said.

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AstroSkipper

AstroSkipper

Posted
Posted
Just now, mina7601 said:

Oh, sorry. Google Translate detected the "woe betide" sentence as Frisian. But, I did use DeepL translator as you said, and translated "woe betide so." and accurate results came up, which is, it's English indeed as you said.

Forget about Google Translator! Not really a good choice! Use Deepl instead!

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msfntor

msfntor

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A man and his two cats
Before she died, my mother explained to me that a cat gave "better results than a couple. All advantages."
- by PEDRO ZUAZUA

When, in June 2016, I took out the phone to call my mother and tell her that I had decided to adopt a cat, I received as an answer a peculiar question: "So, you're never going to get married?". That association of ideas caught my attention because of how quickly it came to her mind, but it didn't surprise me too much either. After all, single people with (at least) one cat and little (or no) desire to get married is a common cliché. In my gang we had a recurring joke about dying alone, surrounded by cats and with milk cartons littering the floor. I say it was a joke we had because, as we have moved on in life and adopted felines, the chances of it actually happening increase markedly and the joke seems to get less funny.

It so happened that, shortly after Mía -that's the cat's name- arrived home, I published in EL PAÍS a chronicle about the experience of incorporating an animal into your life. The text was a moderate success - in no case by merit of the author; any digital content that includes cats will capture the attention of the audience - and led, over the years, to two books and an Instagram account with several thousand followers. That first text about living with a feline left several comments from readers. Almost all of them kind. Some of them were a little bit angry - "the cat would have written it better"-. But there was one, in particular, that caught my attention. A reader shared an article by Tim Kreider titled A Man and His Cat, published in The New York Times in 2014. Kreider had lived with one for 19 years and was dedicating a loving tribute to her.

The article intrigued me so much that I didn't read it calmly until six years later. Let me explain: it was a farewell text and I, at that time, was more in the mood for reading things that celebrated life than for regrets. But, for some reason, I kept it in my retina. When I went back to it, I understood what my mother meant that day. In her article, Kreider maintained that people have a certain amount of affection that we need to express and that, in the absence of "a more appropriate object (a child or a lover, a parent or a friend)," that affection can be redirected toward a cockatoo or an aloe plant. He supported his theory with a conclusion written by zoologist Konrad Lorenz in his book On Aggression, according to which, "in the absence of the appropriate triggering stimulus for an instinct, the stimulus threshold for that instinct is gradually reduced; for example, a male pigeon deprived of female pigeons will attempt to initiate mating with a stuffed pigeon."

My mother passed away in March 2021. She did so after more than ten years of illness. In the last few days, we had several conversations in which, besides confessing to me that when she grew up she wanted to be a cat - "they sleep 16 hours a day, they don't have to make the bed, or cook, or go to school, or be accountable to anyone" - she explained to me that, deep down, for her a cat gave "much better results than a couple. It's all advantages. She never physically met Tuna, my second cat, but she asked about them every day. "When you are in Madrid and you are alone, I am calmer because I know that you are with the cats and I know that they keep you company and that you are happy".

Understanding that phrase of my mother's took me six years and a few sessions with a (good) psychiatrist. Understanding the evolution of her feline thinking can only be framed within the framework of a mother's love. Of course, both she and Kreider were right: a man who is in his room with his cats can be many things, but he will never be alone...

 

HERE: Un hombre y sus dos gatos: https://elpais.com/icon/2022-05-13/un-hombre-y-sus-dos-gatos.html

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msfntor

msfntor

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A cat does not enter my house. Period.
 

The first-time cat guy comes out of the closet (and writes a book). We publish the first chapter
Mía'. the cat that did come into the house, taking a selfie with me.


PEDRO ZUAZUA
30 APR 2018 - 14:38 UTC
-A cat doesn't come into my house. Period.

I also remember having a German Shepherd puppy for three days during which we acted as a liaison between the family that gave her up and the family that adopted her. Since we didn't have a leash, we would take her outside on a leash from my father.

When I was a child, my father agreed to buy me a duck at the El Fontán market in Oviedo. Don't ask me why I asked for it or why he said yes, as there is no logical explanation. The fact is that Alfred J. Kwak (that's what I called him) came to live with us. His space was in the kitchen, in a big cardboard box. There we would leave him milk (do ducks drink milk?) and food. We would put a silver foil blanket for him to do his business and every so often we would take him out for a walk around the house. A little yellow duck in an apartment, what a great idea. The thing is that two weeks later we went to the town of my maternal grandparents. Fuentes de Ropel, in Castilla y León, whose main characteristic is that it is almost equidistant from Zamora, León and Valladolid, which seems easy, but it is not. And the duck came with us, of course. He traveled in the trunk - "That way he doesn't get dizzy", my mother reasoned- and, when we arrived, I took him straight up to my room. In the evening I was persuaded to leave him outside in the yard. That was the last time I saw him. The next morning, Alfred J. Kwak was gone. My parents told me that a cat had eaten him. It was the shortest way they could find not to tell me that a duck had rather little meaning in our house and that they had decided to leave him at a farm in town.

BCBHHF6AYL73T2KHKTY7N7UIVY.jpg

He took my bed already on the first day.
PEDRO ZUAZUA
That's exactly where my relationship with animals ended. Until my girlfriend Barbara adopted a small Siamese cat named Micu. She was a rickety, skinny, shy little creature who spent the first few days in her new home hiding in a hole behind the toilet cistern. Barbara wasn't much of a cat lover either, but she told us every day of the kitten's progress. We laughed and called her the Crazy Cat Lady. And me, I admit it, Micu scared me. When he approached me, I would tense up; and when he wanted to play, I would offer him my clenched fist, so he wouldn't scratch me.

The first minutes of 'Mía' in the house.
PEDRO ZUAZUA
Barbara, like any self-respecting cat owner, began her work of evangelization: that if you don't know the company they keep, that if you don't know the joy they give, that they are super agile and never throw anything (lie). And of course, with a couple of butts of cider, the bricks of my anti-cat wall deteriorated almost imperceptibly. From "no cat in my house. And that's it", I went on to inquire about the goodness of the animal. And you know that from asking questions to start seeing pictures of cats on social networks is only a step away. And you have to admit that these little animals are very photogenic and cute, and that you don't have to take them for a walk three times a day, and that they can stay home alone for a weekend, and that they are very clean... But no, I said that a cat doesn't fit in my house. Period.


Mine in the attitude of the owner of the house.
PEDRO ZUAZUA
Because, at that moment, I still had the strength to resist. At the end of the debate, a kind of unknown lucidity appeared and made me say: "No, really, I'm not ready to have a cat. I don't want it, I won't take good care of it and it won't be happy with me". And so on, until the next dinner. However, the poison was already there. Inoculated. To cut a long story short, I'll tell you that cat owners' networks are inexorable, and once they smell the blood of a new victim, they don't let go until it accepts. Then began the phase of bombardment of photos and videos of candidates. I, for some reason, preferred a female. (Note that, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, I had already gone from steadfastly refusing to anticipate the sex of my cat). I had read (that is, I was reading about cats) that females are better behaved and have a more bearable character. Also that they are more affectionate. Although I had taken it for granted that it was a real lottery. I had even seen that cats born to three-colored specimens are mean, but I don't know the scientific basis for this claim.

The first time in my life I saw 'Mia'.


The first candidate came to me by video. It was sent by Isaac and Luis, a couple of friends of mine who have two cats, Tina and Garcia. The lady who takes care of them when they go on vacation (the pets, not them, of course) collected cats and placed them in foster homes. The cat was a blue-gray color. I reproduce the words that appear in the video: "Let's see, microscopicie, your father wants to see you. Look how small and clever that little thing is". At that moment, the cat meows and the dialogue returns: "What you want is to be caught, huh? I'm not afraid of dogs or anything". The video ends with the cat turning towards two rather large dogs that she pounces on and pushes back. I instantly empathized with those poor dogs and waited to see if time would relocate the cat, who turned out to be a cat, to some other house. It happened the next day.

It's enough to take away something you didn't want to make you want it. And so it happened. Even though I didn't want that cat, I suddenly felt the need to have a cat. A cat, in particular. And I called my friend Paloma, another of my cat references, and she immediately sent me pictures of a litter of newborn cats in Galicia. They were white, with several black spots scattered over their bodies. Paloma informed me that she was planning to travel to Galicia in two weeks and that she could bring me one. I said yes. Hala, I already had a cat.


Cover of my book.
But it wasn't that one. The weekend before the arrival of the Galician cat, a series of events ended with Mía at home. Mía had been born a couple of months before a few kilometers away from Madrid. Barbara had offered her to her friend Maria, who already had another cat, and she (Maria) had accepted. When Barbara sent me a picture of Mía in her purse, walking along Gran Vía, I was touched to see those little eyes, and as I didn't really see the danger of her ending up in my house, I verbalized it in front of my friends: "I wouldn't mind keeping her", I said. In the evening, while we were having dinner, Maria informed Barbara that her pet could not stand the presence of another cat and to please come and pick her up as soon as possible. There was no turning back now. It was time. Someone inside me took the wheel and said, "Hey, I'm going to get her right now". I had empathized with that cat and I didn't want to imagine her spending the night in a house where she was not welcome with a congener ready to climb her. Someone with some sense replied: "But where are you going, Pedrín? If you don't have food or a sandbox or anything... You'd better wait until tomorrow and take her calmly". And so, on June 19, 2016, Mía arrived at my house. We were both starting a new life.

 

HERE: https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/04/30/animalesycia/1525086090_154792.html

 

Edited by msfntor
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