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Sunday, July 4, 2010

Rooftop Cats: Pause and Play

A tortoiseshell cat sleeps while the half-grown kittens play on the rooftop (see skinny black tail to the right of the photo). Can you see two other young cats on the wall near her?  I wonder if any of these are Shadows's siblings...

 Ginger and white cat thinking up mischief
The black cat (owner of the skinny black tail in first photo) readies himself for a pounce while the ginger and white cat watches
Bits of electric wire make handy toys when you're a rooftop cat !

The black cat disappears through a drainpipe to get to the lower rooftop
Whoo-hoo, Blackie, where are you?
 Here, silly!  

Above is the mother cat of three kittens born behind the staff showers. I've been feeding them for the past month. She hisses and spits so viciously that I'm a bit nervous when I bend down below this wall to put the food down. I always wonder when she'll land on my back! Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
 Shadow, the most spoilt cat in Khartoum,  asleep on my desk.

Which cat would you rather be?

The Arabic word for black is aswed.
The Arabic word for white is abeyud (you need to "swallow" the last syllable!)
The only Arabic word that I know for ginger is the same as orange which is borturali (the "r" sounds like a soft "gh" - almost clearing your throat! Easy huh?)

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7 comments:

  1. Oh My .... That's an easy one for me, Jo. I'd choose Shadow... I'm much rather be spoiled rotten on the inside in my air-conditioned home!!!!!

    BUT--those are pretty rooftop cats... There's one of them who looks a little like Shadow... Hope Shadow never gets out there.. Would those cats be 'nice' to Shadow--if that happened?????

    Hugs,
    Betsy

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  2. What an asortment Jo. The one looks like it is ready to pounce on you. :)

    I bet you are excited and cannot wait for this week to be over so you can get back home again? How wonderful for you.

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  3. An amazing variety of photos! Love the photo of the ginger and white cat peering into the hole in the wall! And the hissing cat is quite freaky!

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  4. Those cats are adorable! Any one of them looks good to me.

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  5. I'm not so fluent in colors but ginger means zanjabeel,so zanjabeeli will refer to the color :)
    white : Abyadh dh is like in German da or English dump, the fem. "baydha" means also "egg"
    blue : Azraq - zarqa
    red : ahmer - hamra
    black : aswad - sawda
    yellow : asfar - safra
    orange : bortoqali (probably from Portugal) and this gh pronunciation of q is really funny for us :d

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  6. I've thought of the simplest words for you since I don't know how to pass Semitic letters to you in Latin Alphabet
    el bait amaana fi ragabtek (the house is amaana in ur neck) amaana is anything you leave at some1 to take care of while you're away, words that share the same root ameen "honorable" and amaan, amn "safety,security" and raqaba means neck but you know in Sudan they would pronounse the q "g or gh"
    khalli baalek men el guitat (take care of the cats) Cat in standard is quitta (pronounse it as Spanish qui like quizas) but in Sudanese it becomes "guitta" that's so close from the Spanish and Italian word for fem. cat

    You're in Khartoum, Jo, Arabic scripts should be all around you :d
    Actually the windows has to be Arabic enabled, so you may ask any neighboring teenage for a windows cd, you may need to change the keyboard until you get familiar with the places of the letters, or you may just use google translation (and transliteration) if your windows can read Arabic letters
    http://translate.google.com.eg/?hl=ar&tab=wT#en|ar|
    you can call me Mahmoud, my lady :)

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  7. Nice story, I am very enjoy it and I love the 8th shot.
    Thank you for sharing !

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Thank you for visiting my blog and taking the time to leave a comment. I appreciate your feedback. Jo