Kočka -- Czech for Cat

Kočka is the Czech word for cat. It sounds like coach-ka, emphasis on the first syllable. My mother's father's family emigrated to the U.S. when there was still a country named Bohemia. It, along with Moravia and a bit of Silesia, is the Czech Republic today.

Kočka the good kitty.

He waits for me at the bottom of the stairs while I'm in the laundry room. That is, he waits, unless I've failed to properly close the door so he can't push it open and get in with me. It wouldn't be such a problem if he did, but he can get into the unfinished crawl space under the house. Who knows what's in there. It may not be safe for him. Dragons maybe.

He comes when his Dad whistles. (I can't whistle.) He plays fetch as long as his Dad will toss his toys. He's figured out that the light and numbers come on my cell phone when he touches the screen. And his Dad got him an app to play on the tablet. 

    

                  

                Kočka came to live with us in August         A few weeks later he had grown. Of course,

                of last year. Here he is with his Dad.           not as much as it looks here. It's all a matter                    The same Dad who really didn't want         of perspective. My husband didn't age this

                a cat. "Cats belong in the barn."                   much in  those few weeks, either.                                         We don't have a barn.                                   This is my Dad.

                                                  

Our one-eyed cat.

He practices lurking incessantly,

and ambushes anyone who walks by.

   

Though he never expresses an interest in going outside, he loves to look outside.
He watches the birds at the bird feeder out back and cars and rabbits out the front.

The man, who didn't want a cat, brought in a box of snow 

so the cat he didn't want would know what snow is. 

Kočka was not impressed.

You might find him anywhere.

He knows he's not supposed to be on the table so he hides.

     

 Though not very well.

  See that cat on the lower shelf of the entry table? And the glass vase?  

Once there were bare branches in that vase. Long, but thin. Smaller in diameter than my little finger. Maybe a little bigger than a pencil. In dishes made by my potter son are piled origami cranes folded by my daughter. They bear signatures of our guests and the dates they visited. And they used to hang from the branches. How Kočka kept from knocking the vase onto the floor when he pulled the branches down, I do not know.

And the masking tape strategically placed sticky-side-up on the top shelf? Kočka doesn't like sticky stuff stuck to his lovely long fur.

It didn't always work though. My plants have been banished to a back bedroom until my husband can build a cat-fence to block access to the entryway. Kočka won't be able to watch out the front door any more. But, you know what? I don't care.

                                            So devil                                                 or Angel

   

He's our Kočka.