Dobrzyn: Sunday and Monday (featuring Hili)

Life is peaceful and slow in Dobrzyn, which is the way I like it. Here’s last night’s dinner: salad and a Swedish dish, nötfilé på potatisbädd, tender medallions of beef cooked with thinly sliced potatoes, black pepper, and a lot of garlic. All washed down with a favorite Polish beer, Zubr (“bison”).

Hili looking out the window; it’s too cold for her to stay out long:

Asleep with Hili, a favorite Dobrzyn activity (or lack thereof):

Top view. As they say, here I’m “encatted”:

Cyrus encatted:

As you may know, Hili comes in by jumping on the living room windowsill and demanding that someone go out and pick her up to carry her inside.  Here Andrzej is the sucker:

Hiroko sent Hili three packages of “cat’s snacks” from Japan, which I photographed yesterday. They are some kind of meat or fish paste, and clearly have been cat-tested for deliciousness. Here’s a video of Hili devouring one tube of snack:

Dinner tonight: Chicken wings in soy sauce, boiled potatoes with dill, and broccoli, again washed down with Zubr:

Finally, Hili next to Hiroko’s cat embroidery book. Hili’s on the cover, and Hiroko’s embroidery, including that of the other 5 cats (and one d*g) is on display in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. Hiroko notes in the book that Hili was the most difficult cat to embroider, requiring 37 different colors of thread. Some of her notes (the book’s in English):

It seems an overwhelmingly large number of stray cats are brown-black mackerel tabbies, like this one.

But it’s really hard to stitch them. For starters, I can’t find the exact right colours, and their colours and markings are the most difficult. I often want to give up half-way.  But because they’re so difficult to do, I’m absolutely beside myself with joy when I manage to finish one.