yesterday, when the weather was surprisingly beautiful, we were outside. me, mostly hanging around with my telephoto lens, watching the kittens play, hide, and explore.

later, on the inside, i took some photos of the older cats as well, while they were waiting for food:

they had to wait a bit longer. first, we did some cooking: a vegetarian zürcher geschnetzeltes (based on dinki) with rösti. won’t be the last time we had that :)

today, while being in bauma, we saw a steam locomotive from the dampfbahn-verein zürcher oberland. they usually operate on sundays from may through october between hinwil and bauma. (and yes, it’s on our to-do list!)
here are two snapshots of the train:

it’s almost a week ago that i posted photos from our cats, and in particular from miukumauku. well, i took some photos during this time. here’s a selection of some of them.

the black cat is coming back home more often. (right now he’s even sleeping on the couch next to me.) miukumauku is more and more copying behaviours from the other cats, in particular food behaviour (“meow! feed me!”) from the tiger cat (while preparing breakfast, suddenly tiger and miukumauku showed up on the stairs, looking at me – “are you preparing food for us?”). miukumauku is coming quite close to the other cats – sometimes too close –, and is climbing around in the cat trees. especially the big red cat and the black cat are not too amused about that. miukumauku can now leave the house whenever she wants. most of the time she stays on the inside, which is fine for me. i guess she’s copying the other cats as well (except the black one).

while watching miukumauku exploring the balcony today, i also saw some bees, and took some macro photos:

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.

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

here’s a list of concerts i’ve been at this year, for historical reasons. not taking in account some classic concerts.

• 07.02.2007: therion, grave digger and sabaton were playing at the z-7 in pratteln (symphonic orchestral metal, and some more thrashy/whatever metal);
• 21.02.2007: amplifier and cloudride were playing at abart in zürich (progressive art rock);
• 24.02.2007: blackfield and pure reason revolution were playing at the z-7 in pratteln (progressive rock, art rock);
• 04.03.2007: …and you will know us by the trail of dead and forget cassettes were playing at the rote fabrik in zürich (alternative rock);
• 29.03.2007: morgana lefay, sacred steel, serenity and bitterness were playing at rock city in uster (various kinds of metal: death, prog, power, true, …);
• 09.04.2007: moonsorrow, swallow the sun and some band whose name i forgot played at the z-7 in pratteln (pagan metal, doom metal, death metal);
• 10.04.2007: circle ii circle, savage circus, tomorrow’s eve and tempesta were playing at the z-7 in pratteln (metal);
• 13.04.2007: moonspell, napalm death, behemoth, gojira and dew scented were playing at the z-7 in pratteln (death and black metal, metalcore);
• 16.05.2007: spock’s beard was playing at the z-7 in pratteln (progressive rock);
• 27.05.2007: trivium, annihilator and some band which was playing before the official opening time were playing at the rohstofflager in zürich (thrash metal);
• 29.05.2007: arena was playing at the z-7 in pratteln (progressive rock);
• 31.05.2007: anathema and moondawn were playing at the z-7 in pratteln (atmospheric rock with metal influences);
• 01.06.2007: machine head, type o negative, cataract and zatokrev were playing at the volkshaus in zürich (thrash metal, doom metal, metalcore and death metal);
• 27.06.2007: dream theater and megadeth were playing at the volkshaus in zürich (progressive metal, thrash metal).

if i’ll find the motivation (and if anyone cares), i might write a few words about some of these.