Cats of Egypt

If you are a dog person, please just indulge me on this one... If you are a cat person, welcome to my world :-)

Egypt is full of cats.  We went for a run the other day and met a group of 14 cats lounging around together in the sunshine.  Two of them were practically fighting each other to get our attention.

This post is a panegyric to the many and varied cats we have met over the last two months.  I have photos of some, but others you will just have to take for granted that they were totally awesome and unimaginably cute.

1. Sneeze Cat
     Age: <1 year
     Location: Dahab (Penguin Restaurant)
     Distinguishing Features: Green plugs of snot crusting up each nostril.

Sneeze Cat was a pathetic creature.  He was slumped around the restaurant panting pathetically. His fur was a little torn in places, and his nose was blocked up with crusty green snot.  Naturally, animals like that love me, and he turned out to be rather disgustingly affectionate.

At some point Patrick idly pondered where cats in Dahab get their drinking water from.  (The town is between the Sinai desert and the Red Sea, and even the water that comes from the taps is salty.)  So I took the saucer from my tea cup and filled it with bottled water.  Sneeze Cat lapped it up.  I refilled the saucer.  Cat drank.  Saucer refilled...etc.  All in all, that cat drank probably half its body weight in water.  Soon its breathing had slowed to normal and it had perked up considerably.  Then...

*Aaaaaaaa-chooo!*

The earth's axis shifted.  The Red Sea may even have briefly parted.  An enormous plug of green snot shot out of Sneeze Cat's nose and attached itself to my leg.  Sneeze Cat looked surprised, breathed a little, miaowed his thanks and trotted off.

No photo, I'm afraid.  I was too busy wiping up snot.

2. Big Tabby
     Age: >5 years (Probably into his 70s in cat years.  An old-timer.)
     Location: Dahab (Al Shams Restaurant)
     Distinguishing Features: Wily cunning

There were lots of kittens in the restaurant begging for food.  Each table was provided with a water spray to ward them off if it got a bit too much.  Big Tabby paid no attention to the diners or the kittens.  He just slept soundly on a cushion next to me.  Then suddenly he shot across the room and grabbed a whole pita bread from under someone's nose, and disappeared under a table at the other end of the room.  No nonsense.  No begging.  Just showing those young uns how it's done!

No photo, he was too fast.

3. Ginger Daddy
     Age: 4 years (Middle-aged, experienced, definitely still got 'it')
     Location: Siwa Oasis (Palm Trees Hotel)
     Distinguishing Features: Narcolepsy; a 'trophy kitten' following him everywhere

This is a cat that knows a good lap when he sees one.  Near-impossible to displace once in situ.  'Trophy Kitten' trots around after him mewing pitifully.  He mostly ignores her in his quest for a good sleeping place.

4. The cross-eyed cat
     Age: 1 year
     Location: Siwa Oasis (Café)
     Distinguishing Features: crossed eyes

Doesn't do a lot apart from sit around looking pathetic.  Not very co-ordinated!

5. Lame Cat
     Age: <1 year
     Location: Alexandria (Café near Swiss Canal Hotel)
     Distinguishing Features: pronounced limp

Lame Cat... how can I describe Lame Cat, other than awesomely cute.  The dumb look on my face says it all really.  Lame Cat had me entranced. We went to this café every day for a fortnight just to see Lame Cat.  Unfortunately one of the waiters didn't really like me being there so we stopped going.  I still miss Lame Cat :-(

6. Rafters Cat

     Age: 2 years
     Location: Alexandria (Swiss Canal Hotel)
     Distinuishing Features: Enormous wriggling belly

I have never seen such a pregnant cat.  I could feel her belly wriggling with kittens.  We called her Rafters Cat because Patrick had a dream that she was sitting on the rafters of our hotel room.  Then he woke up and was very confused to find that there were no rafters.  We were quite disappointed to leave the hotel before the advent of Rafters Kittens.

No photo, bizarrely!

7. On the seafront in Alexandria.


I'm a Tiger, look, it says so right here:

Awwww!

 

8. Fisherman's Friend

There are lots of fishermen along the Corniche (which is the name for the seafront).  Most of them have a faithful feline companion waiting patiently alongside.  Preferably sheltered from the spray, and letting someone else do all the hard work!

9. It's all in the eyes

There is a fluffy white cat in our building.  Last week she spotted Patrick and immediately ran towards him, miaowing and purring, and then followed him home. 

He noticed that, like him, she has one blue eye and one brown eye, and assumed this is why she liked him so much. Last night we saw her sitting outside with the doorman, and he said "look, she has the same eyes as me" and sure enough, he has one blue and one brown eye too!

10.  Sporting Cats

The following  are some of the reasons why we are now training for a sub-6 hour instead of sub-4 hour marathon.  It is impossible to keep running for more than about 10 minutes!

Do I really have to go back to England in 10 months time?!  Can't I stay here and adopt 17 cats?!!!!

Cairo - life from a tourist's perspective

Miaow!

Running round the Pyramids

We visited Cairo this weekend to take part in the 2nd annual Race for the Cure in aid of the Breast Cancer Foundation of Egypt. 

Saturday started at a time of day that I haven’t seen since my last weekend rowing training back in June.   Our hotel offered to get us a one-way taxi to the pyramids site for 90LE.  We declined and took the metro part of the way (1LE each) and then a minibus the rest of the way (2.5LE each).  Much more fun!

The race was the craziest event I have ever been privileged to take part in.  The pyramids were open as normal, i.e. Giza Plateau was full of tourists, tourist buses, private vehicles, camels, horses, souvenir stands, etc.  Add to this 9,000 runners and intermittent organisation and you’ll have some idea.  

The race began at the panorama point overlooking the three pyramids.  Here I am, waiting for the race to start:

The route followed the road down past each of the pyramids to finish at the biggest, after which everyone walked the remainder of the road down to the Sphinx where there was food and entertainment.

The start of the race (over the tannoy) went something like this:

9:30: “OK, we have EXACTLY five minutes to go…”

9:45: “Five minutes left, everyone.  We’re just fixing some problems.

9:55: “OK, just five more minutes while we clear the tourist buses from the road.”

[absolutely no sign of the stream of buses abating]

10:05: “This is it!  Countdown!  Thirty!  Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight! Twenty-sev…WAIT, NO, NOT YET, NOT YET!!!!”

And a bunch of people set off, followed by the other 8,000 and something.

Here is the start of the race:

We walked, trotted, dodged and occasionally ran our way down the road from the smallest pyramid to the largest.  The road was full of buses driving up the other way.  There were also a few people on camel back joining in the fun.  Neither of us could stop laughing all the way down.  It was well worth the effort of coming to Cairo!

Crotch Fur, and other delicacies

So last week we went to the British Consulate and discussed Crotch Fur with a nice lady from the embassy in Cairo. Not the typical conversation you'd expect over coffee and cakes, but hey...

Anyway, apparently this was a menu item she once saw in Malaysia, whilst dining out with her mother-in-law, along with "vegetables, pulpily pulpily grown."  I love these crazy translations, or spelling mistakes, or sometimes just utterly made up words.  In India I saw a "humburger" on one menu which pretty much described the meat in that restaurant.  If that wasn't tempting there was always the option of a "paper streak" (which I think was their version of a pepper steak.)  If anyone can enlighten me what "egg on a plate, raw wishing" might be (seen in Budapest) I'd be very grateful!

So naturally I have been making a list of such fabulous delicacies we have seen since arriving in Egypt, and here is a sample of my favourites so far:

Selections from "Abu Ghraib" restaurant:
- soap with chicken lever (I might try and illustrate this one)
- macaroni in haven
- bowl of soup with cows legs (We really wanted to order this, but it would have been so disappointing if it didn't arrive with whole cow legs sticking out of the bowl)
- lenition soup
- loaf of stuffed vina
- today jarret (this is my absolute favourite.  We have no idea what it means.  The word in Arabic was something entirely different that isn't in the dictionary.  I am currently using "jarret" to describe the type of cooking I do when I'm using up random leftovers from the fridge, such as the "oinksaka" that we had the week before we came to Egypt.  Anyway, back to the list.)

Selections from Marcuous Cafe
- Pizza Barcelona (4 peace): part chicks, bstrmp part, part of minced, part of sausage (yes, that was bstrmp, not a typo on my part, those exact letters)
- Each additional component of the vegetable 5LE
- Each component of meat 7LE
- Each additional component of the marine species 9LE (good use of a dictionary there)
- Kind of fish: shrimp, tuna, clemery, crab, oncojp (I'm guessing calimari for clemery, no clue for 'oncojp')
- Season juice: watermelon, peach, apricot, quintalob, Tin wire (The Arabic for 'quintalob' was 'Cantaloup', but there was no translation for 'Tin wire')
- Browns with ice (ewww)

- Builder chicks (this is a type of sandwich, dontcha know)
- Hamburger pillow
- Hamburger Paljbnp and white
- Sbit builder or roasted (I kept mis-reading that first word)
- Ice Late
- Medical Li Hookah
- Melliferous Hookah (words fail me... I wouldn't let Patrick order this one though!)

I'll keep collecting.......

Re-connected!

Finally, we have an internet connection at home!  I have been using the wireless connection at the language centre on my phone for the last couple of weeks - useful, but not very convenient.

So here's a quick update:

• we have moved into our new flat!
• we have radically reduced the cockroach population of the kitchen, which has taken many bottles of disinfectant, spray, powder, sanity, a lot of tears, a small amount of standing on kitchen chairs and shrieking, a new hoover, and a lot of energy!
• Arabic classes have been going for a couple of weeks.  It has been a bit up and down, as to start with we were in a big class that was revising stuff I did about 3 years ago, but now we are having our lessons privately so things are going a lot quicker. 
• The doorman of our building has a very friendly cat :-)

Much more to follow in a longer update, but for now I'll leave you with this warning, printed on the extension cable (a.k.a. "Displacement Function Electrical Outlet") that Patrick bought today:

"When use please anp the power source the rope to untle"

So there.