on sunday afternoon, miukumauku met her two sisters the first time since they were separated from their mother. it is interesting to see how different the kittens already behave. the two sisters play and live together, while miukumauku has to survive on her own, together with three adult cats who are not the most social ones. the two play a lot, while miukumauku first watched them a lot, tries to play along, but doesn’t really dare to jump on the others, to really play with them. on the other hand, miukumauku also stays closer to her home, knows where she lives, returns from time to time, while the other kittens run around, and just explore every door they can find.
another interesting thing is that apparently, miukumauku doesn’t want to be left alone. when in the evening we were sitting outside, eating, with the kittens back inside, miukumauku was making a huge noise and tried to get outside. when we’re inside, she’s quite different, watching open doors and windows with interest, looking through, but usually staying inside or close to the opening, only walking a few meters, exploring a bit, usually with me standing nearby.

i’d like to introduce my first cat: miukumauku. a beautiful fourteen weeks old red european short-haired kitten. the name miukumauku is borrowed from the finnish language, where it is an onomatopoetic version of “miaow meow”, the typical cat sound, and is used to denote the “@” sign. (another finnish name for “@” is “kissanhäntä”, which means “cat’s tail” – it seems that the finnish people are the only ones who identify “@” with a cat, and not with a monkey, elephant, or other animals… see the list here.) enjoy some photos!

miukumauku moved in on wednesday evening. the other cats here didn’t become friends with her yet, which is not very surprising. for the last addition, three years ago, it took around a month until the cats liked each others. a typical reaction is the following:

the hissing and growling got less frequent during the last days, and the cats get a lot closer to each other before starting to hiss and growl at each other. but it will take some more time until they will start to fully accept each others.

yesterday we went on an excursion. first, we visited an old ehgraben in züri niederdorf, which is a small trench between rows of houses which was used to dispose of feces during the middle ages. nowadays one can visit it and read the provided information panels. afterwards, we proceeded to the lindenhofkeller, containing celtic, roman and medieval remains.

afterwards, we continued to the sewage treatment center in werdhölzli, zürich. we had a guided tour through the process of treating waste water from the zürich region and its conversion into “clean” water. certainly very interesting! it is also interesting to see what kind of stuff the mechanic filtering finds. among toys, dentures and mobile phones one can find base stations for mobile phones, credit cards, cash, id cards, remotes, pocket calculators, etc. quite amazing.

finally, in the evening, we had a barbecue.

today i was at the pfäffikersee, not very far away from zürich. there are still some leftovers from this year’s seegfrörni.

this is not the first night it snows – yesterday, flakes fell down as well. but this time, the snow is staying. not for long, i’m afraid, but at least for a little while. time to go outside and enjoy it, which i just did. not yet enough to play in it (that probably has to wait until the end of the year anyway), but great enough for some hopefully nice photos. enjoy!

today i flew back to zürich, via frankfurt. on the second leg, i was sitting at a window, and after some time, a beautiful cloudy sunset scenery presented itself to me, which i have to share with you:

after diving through the clouds, it wasn’t that beautiful anymore, instead it was grey, cool and looking rainy… but well, vacation’s over, isn’t it?

here’s my project 52 shot for the eighteenth week. the topic was

das blühende leben.

i took this photo of a bumble-bee slurping nectar out of a blossom in the botanical garden in zürich. please click the photo to get a larger version:

technical details: 1/500s, f/8, 105mm, iso 200.

currently, it sounds like i’m in a war zone. explosions outside, here and there, at random intervals. it already started to get more intensive a few days ago; though some explosions can be heard almost every few days.
but zürich is no war zone, of course. this is just the swiss national day.
i hope it’s over when i want to go to bed…
(it would be so much nicer if it would be a real firework and not just explosions…)

today i did a short excursion to the botanical garden in zürich. the sun was shining and i got some nice pictures. there also was a cat to pet, though after some time it walked away… anyway, it was a nice trip, and here are some of the results. the cat never was in the right position to take a nice photo, so unfortunately there is no photo of the cat…

this friday, our math institute did an excursion to the üetliberg. we took up the cable car at felsenegg, had a drink or ice cream in the restaurant there, and then walked over to the uto kulm, where we had a nice dinner. from there, we took the train back down. the weather was very nice in the beginning, even though rain was predicted and there was a lot of rain in the morning and the night before. while sitting at the restaurant near felsenegg, clouds came up, giving a nice shade for the walk. inbetween, it also rained a few drops, but that was almost welcome as a refreshment. after being at the uto kulm for a bit of time, having a nice apero outside, we were able to enjoy a nice rainbow over zürich. as we went inside, it started to really rain outside. in the night, when we left, it was dry again. i’d say, perfect weather for an excursion! only for the photos, there could have been more sun :-)