Cat-man-do

Nicky – My cat – looked exactly like this cat!
Read on this link HERE  more and see more cat pics and read about all sorts of cat-books. Nicky was a cat like this kitty in this video!

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Chess Picture of the day

Cats playing chess!

Image: Etsy

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Kitty of the day!

This picture was sent to me by Braam…he is a South African living/working in Azerbaijan. He’s found my blog for the recipes and in particular the
buttermilk rusk recipe… and he’s baked his own and he sent me pics of the evidence too…which I will upload on the post with the recipe…and he’s also tried my own pizza-recipe … HERE  he’s thought to send me this pic to make my day…and being a catlover…he really HAS made my day!! This is soooooo cute!!!  btw…he’s also in Baku!!! –and I’m so jealous!! as Baku is the city where the Chess tournament was held a couple of weeks ago and if you’ve seen my posts about it…you will remember the beautiful pics of the old city…and hopefully Braam is going to send me a few pics of Baku too!
If you’re a cat-lover…try getting yourself this book! It’s really a fantastic book to have!

“The Cat Lover’s Companion”

And…this is me, of course!!

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Nicky

This is what Nicky looked like. I’ve found this photo on the internet as our photos of Nicky and Lompie are packed away.

She was a cat found at a nursery. It was a rainy day in Centurion. I wanted to get some plants for a big clay pot in my class. I walked into the nursery. While looking around in the section where they kept all sorts of pots and stands with seeds, I heard a cat mewing. It was a soft, fainted mew and I couldn’t make out where it was coming from. I kept on looking around, but saw nothing. There were tons of shelves, covered in hessian with stuff on display. I starting lifting up the hessian, near where I heard the cat. There she was! A very young kitty with a plate of milk. I couldn’t resist stroking her and picked her up immediately. There was a man serving customers – with a wheelbarrow busy doing all sorts of odd things. Stroking this beautiful little kitty, I walked to him and asked him whose cat it was.”Nobody’s,  I only feed her while she’s around.” I pleaded to have her and he agreed as it was nobody’s cat anyway.

That day was my lucky day! I locked her in my car and ran back to get the plants. I couldn’t get my plants fast enough and to get back to the car. I got back to the car and there, very pleased with herself, she was waiting on the back seat, looking me very thankfully in the eyes through the window. I still remember those large green eyes, head a bit tilted sideways. When I got into the car, it was only a loud purrrr-purrrr I could hear and I knew she was happy. She looked at me as if she has been mine for years.

Nicky loved water! It was funny. I found her on a rainy day and she loved water so much, she liked it if you poured it all over her. She  would then look over her shoulder and just say…”purr-mew”…as  if she was asking for more! I used to have a small red watering can and when I had it with me, she came to me as if she was asking to have water running down her spine. When I poured the water down her spine, she would then wriggle her body and, “purr-mew”, to show how she enjoyed it.

She was friends, big friends, with Lompie. Lompie was the Blue Lilac-point Siamese! They were like kids – crazy kids, chasing one another up and down the flat – and later in the house [when we moved into a house] and around the garden, looking a bit silly most of the times, making us laugh when they were doing it. Lompie would start to chase and then suddenly turned around and then Nicky would chase Lompie. Completely two ‘silly’ children. We had great fun with them and could sit in the garden looking at them playing ‘hide-and-seek’ with one another, hiding behind plants, or going up a tree. It was as if they enjoyed entertaining us and knew how we enjoyed them. Their tails were swishing from side to side when they were taking position, when playing. It was funny. 

The following pictures were found on the internet. I was looking for pictures that portray her personality the best.

Nicky used to get into the basin quite often and loved it when you open the tap slightly to drink some water from the tap. I think she enjoyed the coolness of it too.

She loved to wriggle on the carpet, also when they played, she was always the one on her back, defending herself from Lompie.

Nicky was curious, very curious and I know we have a similar photo of her which we took in our garden, almost this very same position, looking at ‘something’.

In our flat, we also had a beam like this! [behind the front door]. She loved to walk on it, sometimes she was ‘hiding’ there when she heard us coming up the stairs [from outside] and when we opened the door, she would “purr-mew”, as if she couldn’t help herself saying, “hello, here I am!”  or maybe it was her way of saying, “wha! got you!”

Very strange but this photo IS Nicky!! 100% Nicky! Found on dreamstime.com, but this is SO, SO Nicky! 500%!

This is typical what Nicky was like, at times. Lazy-looking, self-content expression on her face. 

Enjoy this cat-poem.

 Cat in the window

What do you see?
Cloud, wind, birds,a bird in a tree.
The daffodils shivering the February breeze,
A puddle in the road beginning to freeze.

Snow on the wind
Dusk in a cloud.
Leaves in a frenzy,
The bird’s head cowed.
Winter – though the sun shines.
Blizzard, and the north wind’s whine.

~~~Brian Morse

A book I used to have!

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Lydenburg Heads and home to the black leopard

 

Lydenburg Heads..about 310 km from Pretoria

Lydenburg Heads… image: metmuseum.org

Lydenburg is the town where I grew up since my 5th birthday….on the farm “Goedgedacht” about 15 km outside the town, near Pilgrim’s Rest. Follow this link to read about the Lydenburg Heads….

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/lyde/hd_lyde.htm

This group of seven fired earthenware heads is named after the site where they were discovered in the eastern Transvaal of South Africa. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal samples from the excavation site has established that the heads were buried there around 500 A.D., making them the oldest known African Iron Age artworks from below the equator.

The reconstructed heads are not identical, but do share a number of characteristics. Modeled strips of clay form the thinly opened oval eyes, slightly projecting mouths, noses, and ears, and raised bands decorating the faces, while the backs of the heads are adorned with incised linear patterns. The columnar necks are defined by large furrowed rings. Necks ringed with fat have been and continue to be viewed as a sign of prosperity by many African peoples. However, it is currently impossible to know whether the rings on the Lydenburg heads were intended to be read in this way due to the scant information available on the ancient culture that produced them.

Two of the largest heads could have been worn like helmet masks. They are differentiated from the smaller heads by the animal figures poised on their peaks and the small clay spheres that articulate what appears to be raised hairlines. The animals, once covered by a heavy slip, are now difficult to identify but have disk-shaped faces reminiscent of a lion’s mane.

The five smaller heads are similar to one another, with the exception of one that has an animal visage with a projecting snout. Too small to have been worn as helmets, these heads all have small holes on either side of their lowest neck rings that may have been used to attach them to something else.

For a variety of reasons it has been speculated that the heads were used in initiation rites, perhaps even worn. Specularite, a variety of hematite whose crystals glisten when rotated, was placed strategically on the masks in incisions and raised areas such as the eyebrows. This has been cited as a possible indication that the heads were used in public ceremonies, as they would have shimmered impressively when moved in the light. The holes in the five smaller heads and the helmet size of the two larger ones could also indicate that these earthenware heads were masks worn for various ceremonies. None of this can be known for certain, however, and the use and meaning of the heads remain a matter of conjecture. Nevertheless, it is clear from the deliberate manner in which the heads were buried that whatever significance they may have held, they were respected enough to be interred with care.
Resource: metmuseum.org

This tunnel is in the Eastern part of the country….on the road from Lydenburg to Tzaneen… awesome views in this area! Read more about Advocate J G Strijdom, one of the Prime Ministers of South Africa:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gerhardus_Strijdom

If you follow this link….http://www.griquas.com/2006/6.htm you will find fantastic pictures of places in South Africa, historical sites…very interesting!

Click for larger view

The first school in Lydenburg— built in the 1850’s!

The Dutch Reformed Church, built in 1890

 

The town of Lydenburg (55 km from Sabie) have a rich history associated with the Voortrekkers and the Anglo-Boer War. The name “Lydenburg” means Place of Suffering and the town was so named after the many deaths of Voortrekkers at Ohrighstad due to malaria. In 1856 De Republiek Lijdenburg in Zuid Afrika was formed with Lydenburg as the capital. A year later this independent republic merged with the republic of Utrecht (in KwaZulu-Natal) and in 1860 became part of the Zuid–Afrikaansche Republiek once again.
 

The first church in Lydenburg was completed in 1853. It is the oldest church outside of the Cape Province that survived the wars of the country. Near the church is the original Voortrekker school. It was built in 1851 and was also used as a church building before the church was completed. The Dutch Reformed church was built in 1890 and features a superb pulpit (made from kiaat wood) which is an exact replica of the Stellenbosch Church pulpit.

Lydenburg and areas around is the home of the black leopard!

Love mountain biking/hikes/birdwatching …..and other outdoor sports….read here…

http://www.sabie.co.za/about/mountainbiking/index.html

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

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