Six Months In!

I can't believe I've been here a full six months -- three months in training in the village and three months at site in Kutaisi.  Time was dragging (during those first three months), but now it's flying by...

Here's a good blog/website about Georgia that I recently found:  http://georgiaabout.com/  Check it out!  Especially the recipes and photos...

Also, here's a great blog from one of my fellow PC volunteers in Georgia. He's a far better blogger than me!
http://loganwentdowntogeorgia.blogspot.com/

I'm  a very unreliable blogger -- I think it has been at least three months since my last post. Sorry, folks!  A lot has happened in the past few months -- I completed Pre-Service Training, got "sworn in" as an official Peace Corps Volunteer, moved to my permanent site (and in with my permanent host family) in Kutaisi, and started working at my NGO.  I also had some fun here and there.

So, here are some random thoughts on some various subjects:

The Incredible Spectacle that is the Georgian Countryside and Nature, Chapter 356: Caves
As many of you probably know, Missouri, in addition to being the "Show Me State", is commonly known as the "Cave State."  So, I've been in a lot of different caves in my life...Meramec Caverns, Fantasy World Caverns, Onondaga, Indian Burial, Bridal, Ozark Caverns, Mark Twain Cave, etc. etc.  I've even been in a few "undeveloped" caves (although not as many as my brother, who was, at one time, a sort of amateur spelunker).

Georgia, like Missouri, is riddled with caves.  Only a few have been made accessible to the public thus far.  I've been to two different caves in my region of Imereti -- Sataplia and Prometheus.

Sataplia is a nice cave, not too large (the accessible part), with fairly standard formations.  It is special, though, for its setting inside a beautiful, forested national park in the hills and cliffs outside of Kutaisi.  It is named for the beehives in the cliffs from which locals used to harvest honey; today, the bees are mostly gone, driven away by the tourists, I suppose. But, you can still see the holes in the limestone where the bees made their hives.  And, it is also famous for well-preserved dinosaur footprints, from at least two different dinosaurs from two different periods!

Here is a shot of the smaller dinosaur footprints found near the cave:

This is view of cliffs along the walkway to the entrance of the cave.

And...a view of the countryside from the walkway above:

On another weekend, I visited Prometheus Cave.  This one was SPECTACULAR.  The "developed" section for tourists was a at least 1 km long, and the cave was quite wide the whole way!  No tight squeezes or claustrophobic moments, although I did slip and fall on the wet walkway at one point (embarrassing!).  I have a nice scar (from a skinned arm) as a souvenir.  The cave was filled with room after room of increasingly stunning formations.  Here are just a few of them:
  

They used colorful lighting in the cave -- hot pinks, blues, greens, etc.  You might think this would add a real cheesiness to the natural formations, but it was quite well done and beautiful, really.

Just a cow in the woods
Since Prometheus Cave is inside a national park, I'm not sure whose cow this was, or how it came to be grazing in the forest, but, you know, this is Georgia.  So there are a lot of cows everywhere, just wandering around.  (They do go home in the evenings, but they are out and about, on the town, during the day!)

There are cows on the highway, on busy city streets (sometimes), and, of course, rambling through neighborhoods and grazing in empty lots. I also saw some cows at the beach one day, just chillin':

Post-PST Georgian Learning -- Effectively HALTED
Sad, but true.  Amazingly, once you no longer have intensive language classes with an expert language teacher four hours per day, six days per week, the pace at which you learn new stuff really slows down. I may have even regressed.  Now is the time for discipline!  Which, I don't have much of these days, it seems.  I'm telling myself that November is a new month, and I will start studying on a more regular basis then.

I do have a Georgian tutor. She is sweet. She has some experience teaching English to adults, although not with teaching Georgian. So, it's a learning process for both of us, in some ways. We meet about twice a week for about one hour at a time.  So, not that much.  But, she's doing her best to give me homework, essays to write, etc.  I just have to get better at actually doing the work. Here's a cute picture of us together.  She also happens to be an important and active member of my organization, as well as the slightly younger sister of my director/counterpart, so I see her a lot).

We have now nearly completed a full review of the "Book One" from pre-service training.  I was resistant to the idea of reviewing the whole book, which I had already gone through, but dear Lana was insistent.   Now that we're almost done with it, I do agree that it was a good idea.  Of course, I never really had it "mastered".  I still don't have, even after a second time around. Georgian is one of the top ten most difficult languages to learn for English speakers, I hear!   Next, we move on to new material in the form of Peace Corps Georgian Textbook #2...which means I really will have to study!


My NGO -- "RICDOG" and "working" in August
Georgians mostly take off August.  It's just too hot to do anything other than go to the beach, the village, or the mountains.  So...I found myself the only person in my office for approximately eight days straight.  So, you can imagine that not a lot of "work" was done.  I organized my electronic files and photos, made some drafts of some ideas for presentations and trainings, and watched a lot of videos online!

Now that it's October, folks are back in the office and there is a lot of activity.  Although...since most of my coworkers are college students, no one shows up until after 2 pm in the afternoon.  I get it around 11 or 11:30 and usually have a few hours to myself, which is nice.

Side note:  Since my organization is run by a bunch of very young folks, they have an appreciation for things like technology.  So, even though I fried the motherboard of my MacBook and was without a computer for over a month, I was able to "take over" one from work.  We have several.  This is just another small example of just how fortunate I am to be here in Kutaisi and here at RICDOG.


The Benefits of Having a Bebia
Bebia = grandmother.  My bebia is fantastic. She is a great cook.  She takes care of me. She is very interesting and has a lot of good stories to tell. She was born in the house in which I'm currently living.  She used to be an accountant or bookkeeper during the Soviet years.  I'm really looking forward to learning more Georgian so that we can converse about a greater variety of subjects. Our current repertoire is basically food, family, and weather.

Babua (grandpa) is not bad either.  They are a great pair!

CAMPS!
Never thought of myself as particularly excited about the prospect of being involved in a camp, but when an opening for a "Multicultural Camp" came up, I joined it. Of course, this camp was held at a (crappy) hotel about two blocks from the Black Sea beach, so it wasn't like I was sleeping in a tent on the ground! (My typical camping preference leans towards fancy RVs with air conditioning, running water, and a full kitchen.  Also known as "glamping", I think...)

Well, this "camp" was great -- eight days and seven nights with 50 Georgian teenagers, three other PC volunteers, and five returned FLEX exchange students that acted as counselors/wranglers for said teenagers.  The camp was organized by an NGO in our region with the help of its PC volunteer.

Although it was called "multicultural", a better name for the program would have been "Diversity". We talked about religious, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity in Georgia, Europe, US, and the world at large, and the goal was to promote awareness, tolerance, respect, and support for multicultural diversity.  I'm convinced that most of the campers benefited from the camp and also had a good time. I was very inspired by the intelligent, dynamic, insightful, and talented young people who came to the camp and with how active and engaged they were in the topics.

It was a great opportunity for me.  So great, that I've formed a new committee of fellow PC volunteers to start an annual "Diversity Camp" here in Georgia.  Our new camp will join the growing list of great PC-led/initiated camps for Georgian teens -- GLOW (Girls Leading our World), BUILD ( Boys United in Leadership Development), LIFE (Leadership, Integration, Fitness, and Education), SELF (Self-Esteem Through Leadership & Fitness), etc.  I guess we also need to come up with a clever acronym for the Diversity Camp!  Any ideas...?

Here are some pics from the Multicultural Camp:

Waiting the arrival of the kids for check in. Yes, we took over the hotel's front desk...

Campers (in grey) and one of the PC counselors showing off their personal potato friend. (Groups were given potatoes to "meet" and then had to introduce their potato to the rest of the camp.  This activity was used to illustrate individual diversity among seemingly homogeneous groups.)

And, finally, a camper and one of the FLEX counselors demonstrating the proper selfie technique. It helps to have extremely long arms, like this guy's.  Georgians are mad for selfies.

Jesus and Transportation

...Because you just never know.  Drivers -- of cars, buses, taxis, minivans, and even cable cars -- in Georgia usually have a little shrine.  Sometimes, it has pictures of St. Georgi (Giorgi) fighting a dragon, but more often than not, one finds an image of Jesus in the Georgian Orthodox style.  I particularly enjoyed this one, since it also included a little olive (?) branch. It was in the car of my host mom's sister's father-in-law (I think that was the relation...).  Personally, I would recommend (a) having basic rules of the road and (b) actually following said rules as a better way to stay safe on the road. But, that's not the Georgian way. The Georgian way involves absolute chaos with a bit of praying and blind faith thrown in for good measure.

The End of Pre-Service Training -- Yay!!

My eleven weeks of Pre-Service Training is (finally) coming to an end, and it's bittersweet.  On one hand, I'm very excited for our "swearing-in" ceremony (tomorrow!) and for moving to Kutaisi and living with my new host family, and for getting started at my job at RICDOG (www.ricdog.org).  I'm also looking forward to having more free time to just relax, read a book, watch some videos, and hang out.

On the other hand, I will really miss:

My wonderful Kareli host mom & sister, Lamzira & Khatia, who have graciously shared their home and lives with me over the past three months.  Khatia will get her room back!  I'll also miss my sister Nana & brother Giorgi, who I see on  a fairly regular basis when they have time off from their work or studies and visit from the capital.
My extended family and neighbors -- the family birja clan, all of whom have been welcoming and willing to put up with my broken and limited Georgian.
Daily (Mon-Sat) lunches with my clustermates.  I'm pretty sure we'll never eat this well again, on such as regular basis, in Georgia.
Daily contact with fellow trainees -- we were strangers when we met in DC, but many of them, especially my fellow IODs (indiv & org development) are like family now.  Soon we'll be "alone" in our sites, left to our own devices.

At the swearing-in ceremony tomorrow, the US Ambassador to Georgia will be there.  He will give a quick speech.  Plus, there will be an education and a IOD volunteer giving a speech (we voted for whom we wanted). Some of the volunteers, myself included, will be singing both the US national anthem and the Georgian one.  Of course, we're singing the Georgian one in Georgian!  Those of you who know me well might know that my singing voice is crap -- I cannot carry a tune at all and have no real singing ability.  But, I think I can lip-synch convincingly! Haha. Fortunately, there are a few new volunteers that have great voices -- I'm expecting them to carry the load.

We will also all be taking the official oath to become a full-fledged volunteer.  It seems to be the same oath as the one that members of Congress take upon taking office.  We swear to defend the constitution against "all enemies, foreign and domestic", etc. etc.   This is somewhat intimidating, but, as it turns out, most government officials take it!

In attendance will be members of our current PST host families as well as members of our new, permanent host families.  I'm pretty sure each will be curiously (and sometimes jealously) eyeing the other to check them out.  The PST host families, in particular, will be wanting to make sure that our new host families are good enough for their Americans! (They have, for the most part, really taken us into their families and feel quite protective of us. We are their children -- I'm sure this is partly because we speak like small children, at best, at this point!)

After the ceremony, we're heading straight  to our permanent sites, and then the real fun begins!

Here are some recent pics from recent happenings in and around town:

 Tamuna (host cousin, on the ladder) and her father-law, picking cherries.

 Tamuna's lovely daughters.  I will miss them both when I move to Kutaisi.

Cluster-mate Bill and his host brother Giorgi (of course!) with Giorgi's pride & joy -- a painting of a bear fighting a wolf.  Giorgi is awesome: he loves hunting, muscle cars, and superhero movies.  He was a fabulous host brother to Bill, looking after him and making sure he was safe, well fed (but not salted, lol), and comfortable.  Giorgi was on Saakashvili's security detail, we've been told.

As part of our training, all of us IOD trainees had to do a training practicum; doing training sessions on various topics is one of the most common work tasks we'll have at our permanent sites.  Topics range from financial literacy skills, employability, using technology, youth development, gender issues, etc.   I did my two-hour session (with a translator!) for the local library staff on the topic of "Addressing Common Workplace Challenges".  It went pretty well, I think.  Workplace challenges are universal, yet it was very interesting to see the different approaches that Georgians might take compared to those that Americans would normally take.  We learned a lot from each other in this training session, I think!

Cluster-mates Kathy & Nate during our IOD training practica.   Kathy's training topic was personal budgeting.  Nate did a session for several local youth heading off to college on how to separate "needs" from "wants" and make a simple personal monthly budget based on their (probably) limited monthly allowances/stipends.

We had a Fourth of July picnic for PC G15 trainees and host families (and PC staff) -- plus we had a few congressmen's wives and one congresslady's husband.  They were part of a Congressional Delegation visiting Georgia last week.  In this picture, on the bench, center, is my host mom. 

 This is Khatia, my host sister, hanging out down by the river at the picnic.  The picnic was held as a riverside park-like location near Kareli.

 America's birthday cake at the PC 4th of July picnic.  LOVE these "candles".  Can we please get them in the US?  What? You say they wouldn't adhere to safety regulations for cake "candles"?  Bummer.  (By the way, the fellow in the hat is our training manager, Tengo.  He keeps us all in line during PST.)

The olympic torch came through our small town last week!  The 2015 European Youth Olympic Festival will be in Tbilisi this summer, so the torch has been traveling around Georgia on its way to the capital.  It was a pretty big event for Kareli.  This is the pathway made by the local Kareli school kids in their event t-shirts, flanked by Georgian flags.  The fellow in the pathway in this picture is the school's sports coach/PE teacher.  He is a very active and important guy in town.  

This is a picture of the former olympic wrestler (from Kareli, I think) that had the honor of running down the pathway, up onto the stage, and lighting the flame.  There was also music by semi-famous Georgian singers, a couple of speeches, and, once it was dark, fireworks!  This all happened on the Fourth of July, so it almost felt like home -- hot sunny day, picnic, followed by town event, cappped off with fireworks.  

Finally -- I Know Where I'll Be Living the Next Two Years

Wow.  Time flies.  I realize that it has been nearly a month since I last posted.  So much has happened!

A few weeks ago, about two-thirds of the way through our Pre-Service Training, we finally learned where we will be living and working in Georgia for the next two years!  I am delighted to report that, in July, I will be going to the city of Kutaisi to live, and I will be working at the organization RICDOG.

About Kutaisi:  It is the second-largest city in Georgia. In fact, it used to be the capital city -- it was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Colchis as far back as 2000 BC.  Jason and the Argonauts travelled to Kutaisi to retrieve the Golden Fleece with help from Medea. Medea, a Colchian (?) princess and granddaughter of sun god Helios, married Jason and returned with him to Greece.  But, when Jason left her another woman, she killed her sons and herself in a murder-suicide. There were various others killed in her revenge plot, too. (Some) Georgians view her as a sort of hero for being such a loyal, strong-willed wife.  (Not sure I entirely agree.)

Today, Kutaisi is hilly, hot, and relatively well-developed. There is 24-hour water service in most of the city (although not all), and there are some very nice, touristy downtown spots in which you (almost) feel like you're in a European country!

About RICDOG:  Please check out the organization's website at www.ricdog.org.  The NGO is called "Research Intellectual Club - Dialog of Generations".  I think that when the organization started, it was focused on bringing different generations together to share ideas to improve civil society in Georgia. That's still a goal, but it does sooo much more today.  Today, in my opinion, the organization functions as a sort-of meeting place/club/community center for (mostly) youth to get together and engage in different kinds of activities that build their civic engagement (& other) skills.


This is a picture of the building in which RICDOG's office is.  It is a house, actually, and we have the entire first floor, plus two rooms upstairs.  The upstairs veranda is very big/wide and a great place for mid-morning coffee!

Most of my colleagues are pretty young -- check out the Board page -- almost everyone is in his/her 20s. So, it's a youthful, energetic, and optimistic place.  I think it will be very interesting, challenging, and fun to work there!  I hope that I can keep up with them!  Here they are:


This is the Board of RICDOG, minus one member who happens to be my host brother.  They are cool, aren't they????

UP NEXT:
We have only two more weeks of Pre-Service Training now (yay!).  This week, the individual/organizational development volunteers will be doing practice trainings for their host communities. My training is called "Addressing Common Workplace Challenges".  Others are doing things related to personal budgeting, project development, defining needs vs. wants, financial literacy, employability skills, CV/resume writing, etc.  These are the kinds of trainings that most of us will do on a regular basis once we get to our permanent sites.

On Saturday, we will have a big 4th of July picnic at a nearby riverside -- volunteers, staff, and host families. PLUS, there will be a congressional delegation coming through GE this week, and our little picnic made it on the delegation's spouse's schedule...so there will also be some "dignitaries" there with us.  We have been asked to behave, and admonished to please NOT ask for references for getting DC jobs when we return to the State. (Apparently, this has happened in the past -- Imagine!  Some folks have no shame... even PC volunteers...)

I hear that there will be hotdogs, hamburgers, and cake.  American stuff! (Except, since it is an official event, there will be no alcohol.  The My cluster (five of us) is planning to bring chocolate chip cookies and maybe also oatmeal-raisin ones or snickerdoodles.

Next week, we have language reviews and our final language exams.  I'm hoping to achieve "intermediate mid".  When we had our mid-PST language exam, I got "novice high", so I'm hoping for two levels up next week.  We'll see...  Sometimes, I think I'm doing well with my Georgian, but some days, I feel like I have hit a wall.  I'm pretty sure this mostly has to do with how exhausted I am at any given moment.

THEN...on July 10th, we have our "Swearing In" ceremony in Tbilisi, where we officially become volunteers and are handed off to our new host families.

Here are some pictures of recent happenings here in GE:

Borjomi, Georgia -- a view from the cable car going up the mountain into Borjomi National Park (top) and a view (bottom) of the surrounding area from our hotel (super-super swanky!) during our "Supervisor's Conference", at which we met our future NGO (or school, for the education folks) directors.  The hotel was very nice; staying there, even for only one night, was a real treat.  It reminded me a little bit of what we all gave up to become PC volunteers, and also highlighted just how simply we are all now, quite happily and easily, living on a daily basis.

 

In Kutaisi, at Bagrati Cathedral, an 11th century GE orthodox cathedral in Kutaisi.  This is a picture of several priests who happened to be there when we were visiting.  I did ask them if it was ok for me to take a picture. 

In/around Kareli, my (current) town:

This is the family "birja", basically, a collection of benches in the neighborhood where everyone gets together in the evenings to hang out and talk.  The kids are playing (literally) in the street off to the right of the picture.  The ladies and grandpas hang out early, and later, it's mostly just (drunk) men!  Georgians (men, specifically) do a lot of drinking.  A lot.

One morning while I was waiting for the PC marshutka to take us to a nearby city for a meeting, I enjoyed watching neighborhood chickens in the city park in front of the government building.

Last Sunday, I made tacos for my host family!  I had taco seasoning from the US, but the rest of the stuff was readily available here.  I made homemade flour tortillas! We used Georgian cheese, which is pretty similar to Mexican farmer's cheese, so it worked very well.  Salsa was made from local tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, and cilantro from the garden.  They were great.

ERISIONI National Georgian Dance Company Concert:

We had the great fortune of being able to attend a concert of one of the top traditional Georgian dance companies in the country.  It came to a nearby city, and we got tickets, with a little help from PC staff. There is no such thing as Ticketmaster or StubHub here!  The process for getting tickets was hilarious -- it involved several calls to a guy at the theater, then picking them up from a third party in our village. We were supposed to go to the pesticide shop to pick up up (?), but were told when we arrived there to go across the street to the furniture shop to get them instead, from yet a fourth party. I'm amazed that they (1) didn't cost us more than the face value, and (2) they were genuine tickets. The theater was Soviet-era, crumbling, hot, and pretty uncomfortable, but the performance was spectacular.  Here are some shots.

This is my host sister Nana, at the theater as we waited for the performance.  She is a medical resident in Tbilisi and travelled to meet us for the concert.  She works at one of the only (maybe the only?) neonatal intensive care units in Georgia.

And... a selfie of me and my fabulous clustermate and friend Christine.

The performance:

Birthday Party in Gverdzineti!

Last Sunday, I travelled to a nearby village with my host mum for the birthday party of her friend and colleague, Guliko.  It was Guliko's 50th birthday, so it was a big one! (Imagine my surprise at discovering that she did most of the work cooking, preparing, etc. and didn't spend nearly enough time just enjoying the party!  Alas, that's the life of a Georgian woman...especially, I think, in the villages.)

There was a VAST amount of food, as is common for Georgian "supras".  It pretty fascinating how the table is typically set for one of these big dinner parties.  Everyone has small plates in front of them (sometimes two, stacked up, so that you can switch to a clean/new plate sometime during the dinner), and the table is covered with dishes. Empty space is frowned upon. If you ever been to a Korean dinner/res taurant, you have an idea of what I mean.  There is typically no passing of the dishes -- everyone should be able to reach everything from where they are seated.  If, for example, one of the foods being served is eggplant with walnut paste, then there will be as many small dishes of eggplant on the table as necessary for everyone to have easy access.   When the table gets too full, they just stack plates of food on top of each other.  It is very important to give the appearance of abundance; no serving dishes are ever left on the table empty!  They are constantly being re-filled/topped up from the kitchen. The upside is that the table always looks fresh and inviting.  The downside is that the lady (or ladies) of the house never have a chance to rest!

The party was a lot of fun.  There was much vino drinking! (Of course, not by me -- only a little!) In Georgian supras, there is a toastmaster, who constantly makes toasts, and asks others to make toasts.  It is taboo to take ANY drink without first toasting...hence the need for constant toasts by the toastmaster.  For men, the tradition is to "bottoms up" (i.e., drink the whole glass, about the size of a small juice glass) with each toast. Not surprisingly, this leads to a lot of drunkenness at these things.  Fortunately for me, women are able to get away with taking just a sip with each toast.  Still, it's a bit difficult to gauge just HOW much you're drinking, because, just as the food serving dishes are never allowed to get empty, the wine glasses are constantly being topped up.  Here again, the goal is abundance.

Here are some fun pics:

 Before the party... The pitchers are full of house-made wine.  White, in this case.  

 Some of the ladies across the table from me.  They're all related...somehow.   The cream-colored dish near the center-right of the picture is one of my favorites.  It is turkey or chicken in a flavorful sauce made with ground walnuts.  Delish!

 This is my host mom, after she made a toast.  She's drinking out of a special clay bowl for this toast.  And yes, she drank the whole thing!

 This is my spot.  Notice how the plates of food are stacked on top of each other!

 This is the toastmaster, or tamada, at this dinner.  In this particular toast, he's using the ram's horn, which is a traditional Georgian thing.  The idea is that there is no way to drink from the horn without drinking it all, because you can't put it down! (Actually, I found a loophole.  You can always pour what you don't drink from the horn into your glass on the table, although I'm pretty sure that's a very girly and/or UN-Georgian thing to do!)

The birthday girl and her cake, with daughter and granddaughters.

Random Musings from Georgia

Have I mentioned that my host family is great?  I feel sooooo fortunate to have been placed with them.  It's a nice, low-key house (most of the time), and this really suits me.  It's usually just the three of us -- host mum, host sis, & I.  The other two siblings are working in Tbilisi and only come home sometimes.

In our house, there is a lot of the following:

Drinking tea
Drinking coffee
Watching Turkish and/or Indian soaps
Surfing the net
Visitors -- mostly relatives that live in the neighborhood, like Nini, who is six and adorable.  She was a bit afraid of me at first.  To her, I talk funny and usually don't understand what she says...but she has warmed up a bit.  Her older sister, Keti, is adorable, too.  And, Keti is super-smart -- sometimes, you can just tell, you know?  Here is Nini:

There is also a lot of cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, and light/moderate gardening.  We just got a new calf. Her name is Taplo.  She spends the days in a nearby field grazing. My host mom walks her over there every morning and then retrieves her in the evenings.  She is brown and moos a lot.  Here are some pictures of her:

 

One thing about cows here in Georgia:  Many families have one or more of them, and they usually just live in the yard during the night and go to a nearby empty field during the day.  An extremely common sight in the mornings and evenings is a guy walking/driving his cows out to pasture or back home, on the streets.   Fascinatingly, the cows know where they live.  If they get ahead of the "pack", they'll stop at the gate of their home an moo until someone lets them in!  Just like dogs.

We also have three chickens and a rooster.  Here are two of the chickens. I have named these two Henrietta (left) and Mabel (right).  Another day, I'll post a pic of Marge, the other chicken, and Steve, the Rooster.  Steve wakes me up every morning, and then pretty much crows all day long.  (Clarification: These are just my names for the fowl; I don't think my host family would ever consider naming them! Although...they did name Taplo...)

 

It has also become abundantly clear, just now, that we also have MICE.  There is a mostly derelict upstairs in this house, accessible only from the outside (as is common in the standard two-story dwellings here in Georgia).  As I'm sitting here in the living room, I can hear them running about upstairs.  I just told my host sister that we need to get a CAT.  She agreed...alas, probably only in principle, though, because I don't think she actually likes cats.  Obviously, this is because she hasn't met any awesome cats like Finn, Otto, Betty, Zed, Thongs, Nosy, Louis, Herbie, or any of the other spectacular felines I know/have known in my life!  I miss these two, right now, in particular.  Mom -- if you're reading this -- please send recent pics of kitties!