Going on vacation and coming back with a stray kitten
[image error]Last week, I took the family on vacation to the Slovakian village of Stará Lesná at the foot of the Tatra Mountains. We had a great time: we stayed in an apartment that was part of a large house run by a delightful couple; we climbed both easy and challenging tracks going up Mount Lomnicky; we visited caves and a healthful thermal spa; on the only day it rained, we enjoyed the Tatra National Park Museum… And, on the last day, we took in a stray kitten.
I’m still not quite sure what the hell happened. The night before our last day, Youngest Daughter had been complaining—with no little justification—that we had still not got the kitten we’d decided to get back in the spring. I tried to placate her but she can be a tough cookie when she’s convinced she’s right (women, eh?). So the universe went to work on the issue. The next morning and the last day of our vacation, we went to Stary Smokoviec to begin our final climb. Youngest Daughter found and picked up to comfort a kitten which was scared and obviously lost. She left it with a couple of very helpful shop assistants. We climbed for a few hours and, somehow, the bloody thing was still there when we came back down. The shop assistants insisted that no one had been looking for it, and in any case Stary Smokoviec is a small town where they all know each other’s business and they knew no one had lost a kitten, so the kitten must have been dumped in the hope a fox or an eagle might snap it up for a tasty lunch… You can imagine the look on Youngest Daughter’s face.
I can highly recommend that part of the world for some enjoyable climbing on mountain paths which by Austrian standards are a little busy, but which by Polish standards are deserted. Anyway, here are a few shots of the scenery—and the newest member of the James household, called Wafer.
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