Yo! Chris here. Flashback to our WWOOFing north of Prague, ca. one week ago. Any cat lovers out there?

Meet Popelka (it means Cinderella in English :) )



She’s one of the 3 kittens here. The unfortunate story is that their mommy, “ran away with another lover,” leaving their uncle (see below) to help raise them and, “train them to catch the mice,” according to Vladimir, our WWOOF host. One species of these mice is actually protected by law. (A shrew, perhaps?) It’s got a pointy face and snout. However, the cats do not care about such protection laws.

Anyway, this cat was special. She’s puffier than her sisters, and has a predilection for gathering wood chips & sawdust into her coat, subsequently walking around the place (sometimes while we are asleep) to spread the love around for us to pick up. She doesn’t understand that the box there full of wood chips, sawdust & wood bits is meant for fire starter material. Come on, it’s right by the fireplace, Popelka.

This particular wood burning heater was located downstairs, where we’d sleep and often project movies or Facebook (hey, why not?) onto the wall, as a part of our post WWOOF-workday relaxation.

I guess we weren’t motivated enough to actually solve the problem—like, cover up the box of wood chips.. So Popelka plagued us several times with her shenanigans..



Laurel would catch her, approaching the spot where we’d lay. She’s a persistent kitty, so we’d have to pick her up and shoo her away.

Anyhow. Afterwhile, we got the jist, and stopped letting any of the cats in, except sometimes the tomcat. He was pretty chill and didn’t like to mess around too much. He’d hang out behind the wood heater. Sometimes the cats would hang out together and it was mega cute.



Other problem was that these kitties were used to the outdoor life. We were moving sludge one day out of a muck filled drainage basin. Where we’d dump the sludge, over the course of 2 hours, all three of the kitties eventually made their way to check out what we were dumping. Damn.



That’s my story. Hope you like it.

Gonna miss those cats!