Aug 31 2009

Backwards Is The New Forwards?

Category: Anna's Photos,Anna's Videos,Dasha&KittensChrisM @ 6:04 pm

hmmmm, another post where WordPress decides that I didn’t really want to use the built in gallery function, and leaves the images orphaned without a post assigned to them. Well anyway, these photos were taken on the 31st of August, and we have now finally reached the end of the backlog. Here you can see Anna starting to learn how to use objects to assist in standing up (hands near her for the inevitable wobbly moments, obviously). Although she can now roll with gay abandon, and crawl backwards, Anna still doesn’t seem to want/be able to coordinate moving forwards. However, given that forwards it same really as horizontally rotating 180 degrees, then moving backwards, she still seems able to get where she wants. Namely off the safe, clean playing area we lay down here or at the inlaws, and onto the much more interesting carpet.
To round off this post, we have a shot of Kara using Anna’s nappy changing mat as a stalking area to pounce on Muska the next time she enters the living room.

Anna Selecting The Next Toy To Play With

Anna Selecting The Next Toy To Play With

Kara Waits To Ambush Muska

Kara Waits To Ambush Muska

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Aug 30 2009

It is Kara&Muska’s 3rd birthda…

Category: TweetsChrisM @ 5:18 am

It is Kara&Muska’s 3rd birthday 2day.Given that they’re our cats,we haven’t bought cake.Their younger sister,Tishka,has had4healthy kittens.

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May 16 2009

Kara, Muska, Anna, Gwen & More Tummy Time

Category: Anna's Photos,Dasha&Kittens,PersonalChrisM @ 7:31 pm

Today we saw Kara and Muska properly for the first time in a little over six months. We had seen them via a webcam session in Skype, but that obviously wasn’t the same. Anyway, they looked well (Kara especially, she has put on some weight and now looks healthily non-boney), so a huge thank you to Gulnaz for looking after them so well. I’ll try and remember to take a few shots of them once we move back into the flat.
Anyway, onto the reason for this post – Anna’s published photos are a long way off real time, so I’m hoping to upload at least the majority of them tonight, and space out the actual posts over the next week or two. These photos are of Anna having some more tummy time (considered important now that parents are advised to place babies on their backs always when sleeping, therefore their neck muscles need developing), with Gwen guarding her in the background 🙂 See here and here for the last couple of similar posts with pictures.

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May 16 2009

Off2our place later2meet Gulna…

Category: TweetsChrisM @ 8:50 am

Off2our place later2meet Gulnaz who’s been flat&cat sitting4us.Please note the &.NOT flat cat sitting 😉 Anna2see Kara&Muska4 1st time ever.

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Mar 20 2009

Hopefully Not A Prediction

Category: PicturesChrisM @ 5:33 pm

of Kara and Muska’s opinion when they meet Anna for the first time in just under a couple of months…

funny pictures of cats with captions

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Nov 10 2008

Cute Kitties

Category: Dasha&Kittens,PicturesChrisM @ 4:50 am

Irina recently mentioned that I hadn’t posted the snaps she took off our cats when they were in a friendly mood with each other…

So we start with Muska and Kara sat cheek to cheek on the sofa, moving on to Muska hugging/holding Kara down (this is often also the start of them fighting – affection and conflict so close together…), then cwching/snuggling, then an ‘action’ (bit blurry 😉 ) shot of Muska cleaning Kara’s face, then finally Muska looking cute as ever whilst rotating for the camera.

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Nov 10 2008

Plenitude of Past Pictures

Category: Dasha&Kittens,Eating Out,Friends,PicturesChrisM @ 2:44 am

I finally got around to transferring the photos from Ira’s camera onto my PC this evening. So you should expect some shots of… DaveG’s party, a few cute shots of Kara and Muska hugging, a couple of visits to the Irish pub (including one when they were had a competition where you could win prizes if you ordered pints of Kilkenny), and some more recent shots of Tishka’s kittens. I also have a lot of news-related posts I need to make, as I want to try and clear down the backlog before we move back to Clydach in a week or so.

(Yes I realise that ‘plethora’ tends to have negative overtones when people read it, but you try thinking of a word beginning with P that means lots of or a bug bunch 🙂 )
[edit]
OK, I gave up and used an online thesaurus in the end. I turned down plenty and pack in favour of plenitude…

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Oct 13 2008

Last Year’s Kitten Has Her Own

Category: Dasha&KittensChrisM @ 9:05 pm

Last year Dasha had a kitten, the little sister of our Karra and Muska. She (Tishka), in turn, had her own couple of bundles of joy last week. As Olympiada (more to follow on the re-assignment of her original name) has just been given away, it was nice that these two kittens came along and replenished stocks 🙂
They are called Nushka and Simeon.

Nushka, Simeon, Tishka and Dasha

Nushka, Simeon, Tishka and Dasha

As this is Tishka’s first litter, she was at first a little uncertain as to exactly what she was supposed to do with these miniature versions of her. Dasha (the kitten’s grandmother), was eager to try and help, and can often be found giving a tongue bath to all three of them!

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Oct 08 2008

Vets In Astana

Category: Dasha&Kittens,PersonalChrisM @ 10:25 pm

(This post isn’t sponsored, nor did I mention that I would write this post to them).

If you find yourself in need of a vet in Astana, the options are sometimes a little scary. The previous one we visited was in the basement of a building, through filthy corridors, into a not much cleaner office that the vet rented. To be fair, he seemed like a nice man, and probably did his best to look after the animals, however the dirt in a place that should be close to sterile REALLY put us off.
As I recently mentioned, Karra and Muska needed to be spayed, and Irina was concerned that the only other vet she knew of was where an older cat of hers had passed away. However, after speaking to a few friends, we decided to visit the Cat and Dog specialist “Zoosfera” (someone remind me to use the proper Cyrillic characters once I’ve converted the MySQL tables, please).
Their address is House 10, Micro Region 2, Astana – not too far from the big Eurasia market, nr. Orbita. You can contact them on 8 7172 344585 or 8 7172 365425 . They also had some pet rodents that they had been looking after, so I assume its OK to ask if you don’t have a cat or dog etc. to help out. There were two vet-like ladies there, and a receptionist who also seemed to know a little about the subject. The place was clean, they had all the medicines they needed in stock, and actually seemed to care about the animals, rather than seeing them as purely a source of income.
Like I said, this post was written because I wanted to help out anyone else who might need a safe vet and no money/discount was given for this info to be published.

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Oct 06 2008

Path To Recovery

Category: Dasha&KittensChrisM @ 5:19 am

Our cats our recovering well, following their operations last weekend. Although Karra is still a little more cautious when it comes to jumping up too high, both her and Muska are no longer frantically searching for an emergency exit when we sit close to them. Unfortunately we will need to catch them again this week, place them in their travel bags, and pop them to the vets to check their wounds have healed correctly, and in Muska’s case, have the stitches removed. (Karra has already removed all but one of hers!)

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