Sunday, February 21, 2010            Somewhere over the Atlantic, heading home.

I am glad to be heading home to warmth and family and my own bed and the time zone that my body knows and loves so well.  The trip to Moscow was amazing in so many ways. I am truly grateful for this opportunity.

I will be back next year!  There is much to look forward to.

In the meantime, I have to learn to speak Russian. And both Mike and I will miss our new friends.  Thank you all for your kindness and hospitality and for being our voices when we needed to communicate.  We will miss you all!

Thank you to Natalia V. – for getting us to Moscow and putting on a great show!
Thank you to Elena and the fella that did the translating for the lecture. (I wish I remembered his name!)
Thank you Vladimir and Natasha for your hospitality and for making sure I had what I needed for the lecture. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and learning more about the Russian grooming industry.
Thank you Kitty for loaning me your Mac charger.  You were a life-saver!  And we loved spending time with you and your hubby. Next time you and I are spending a day at the shopping mall!
Thank you to the other Natalia for being my tour guide at the cat show and treating me with such kindness.
Thank you to Alec and Nadejda for the shopping trip, the excitement about cat grooming, and for arranging the grooming contest.  And for the cognac.  We look forward to seeing you both here in the states in the near future!
Thank you to Simon and Rinat.  It was wonderful to meet you both. I look forward to seeing Rinat’s photos. And maybe one day we will visit you in Tel Aviv.
And to Dr. Mike, we enjoyed meeting you.  It was good to have another native English-speaker around to make us feel more at home (even if you do have a British accent!).

Sunday, February 21, 2010      In the middle of the night- Moscow time

I can’t sleep again.  Of course, back home it is early evening. Folks are on their way home or getting ready for supper.  I wonder what my kids are doing right now.  If it wasn’t so expensive to call them, I would probably see what they are up to.

Mike is sound asleep.  Snoring rather loudly.  I an envious of him. Not that he’s snoring, but that he’s deep in dreamland.  He’ll be awake soon though, I am sure, as we’ve both been waking up around 3:00 AM Moscow time and remain wide awake for hours.  We usually drift back off to sleep just around the time we get a wake up call.  I am too old for this.

As we were saying our “goodbye’s” yesterday to all the folks at Zoo Russia, Nadejda and Natalia presented us with a gift of Russian cognac.  I am looking at the bottle on the table beside the bed.  Mike tried some earlier and was out cold within minutes.  Maybe the cognac had something to do with this.  It’s worth a try……..

Tomorrow we travel home.  A very long trip and I am not feeling well.  I wonder how much I should drink?

ummmm……not too bad.  Warm and tingly going down.  Earlier Mike had said something about it being a very smooth cognac.  But then I asked him how he knew this since he’d never actually had cognac before.  What was he comparing it to?  The other not-so-smooth cognacs he has never indulged in before?

Now that I’ve had some I might call it smooth, too.  I am sleepy. My eyes are heavy…………my………..

Saturday, February 20, 2010       Late Evening – Moscow time

I was promised a day trip on Saturday afternoon so we could revisit the Kremlin, Red Square, Victory Park and a few other places. I really wanted to get those photos!

But it wasn’t Mike’s fault we didn’t go. It was mine. Saturday was the coldest and windiest day of all while we were there. I knew I wouldn’t last 5 minutes outside and each of those stops would require at least a 20 minute trek before we could get ourselves back into a heated environment to thaw out.

On top of things, I was now feeling all of the aches and pains of that nasty cold. Thus the photos would have to wait until the next time we were in Moscow – preferably during a summer month.

The kind woman who allowed me to use her Scottish Fold the day before had come back on Saturday and was very excited about the info I had brought to Russia. She bought my book and DVDs that I had with me and was eager to share this info with exhibitors at the International Cat Show. Nadejda breeds LH Folds and exhibits in both TICA and CFA. She is also an international judge and really knows her cat stuff. She and her husband, Alec, offered to drive Mike and I to a shopping mall to hunt for souvenirs and such.

They took us to a mall in Moscow that was 5 stories high and long enough that we never made it from one end to the other. They helped us find the souvenirs we sought, all for a great price, and in the process gave us some history and other great facts about their homeland. We had a great time with Alec and Nadejda!

Earlier that day, Nadejda’s friend and fellow exhibitor (of Maine Coons), Natalia, gave me a grand tour of the TICA International Cat Show that boasted some 1200 cats in attendance! Through an interpreter, I was able to speak with several breeders and get my hands on a beautiful sepia Bengali with the most striking aquamarine eye color. I was also introduced to the new Toiger breed. I had never even heard of the Toiger before so this was a real treat. While exquisite in appearance, the Toigers tend to have a too much wildness about them, in my opinion. In the grooming salon, we call these cats “aggressive” or “demon possessed” depending upon the mood we are in.

Somehow Nadejda and Natalia hand arranged a cat grooming contest of sorts, whereby the exhibitors would allow me to critique and judge their grooming presentation and then pick from the participants a Best, 2nd Best, and 3rd Best. Fortunately I’ve been to enough cat shows in my day to know how to look the part of a real cat show judge. This was a good thing, too, because several Russian media persons were in attendance to do interviews with me and report on the whole affair.

I will admit I had a lot of fun. The most amazing thing to me was that the exhibitors were so excited about my cat grooming program being brought to them. They truly want to learn how to perfect their grooming, even those that have no intention of operating a grooming salon. I quickly found out that information on cat grooming has been nearly non-existent for them up until now.

I am honored to be a part of this cat grooming “revolution” in Russia. May it be only the beginning of revolutions the world over. Changing the world one cat at a time. I know some laugh at that. But what do they know?

Saturday, February 20, 2010              Late evening – Moscow time

I’ve never been one of those women who packs everything but the kitchen sink when going on a trip. You know, the kind that are prepared for everything. But I am rethinking this tendency now that I’ve been to a country where their alphabet is so different than ours that it is impossible to pick out familiar words here and there and thereby get the gist of things.

Mike started out the trip with a slight cold that quickly turned into a full-fledged cold by the 2nd day of our stay in Moscow. Since I don’t pack in preparation for things such as bad colds in the middle of a Moscow “global warming” winter, Mike had to venture out in search of some meds to help him get by.

The “super market” was “right next door” which, of course, meant it was a 10-15 minute trek through the snow. This was no ordinary supermarket. It was huge. Think Walmart, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, Rooms to Go, and Toys R Us all under one roof.

After searching the mother of all supermarkets from end to end, Mike finally found the pharmacy section. It was a separate little store within the big store where all drugs, both over-the-counter and prescription were sold. There were no meds to browse through and select from. A shopper had to step up to the window and tell the pharmacist what they wanted.

This would not be a problem under normal circumstances. But when the pharmacist only speaks Russian and the shopper only speaks English, it becomes something of a challenge.

How do you pantomime that your head is stuffy and your nose runny and that you have a sore throat and a bit of a fever? And how do you act out that you would simply like some Nyquil and Dayquil please?

After some failed attempts at communicating to the pharmacist, Mike ended up with a sample of some medication in a blue packet. We had no idea what it was or what it did. He was left with no choice but to take the medicine and wait and see.

I will admit I was anticipating some sort of major change in my husband within 30 minutes of his ingesting the unknown med. I watched closely to see if he would start having hot flashes or his hair would thicken before my eyes.

Nothing happened save for the fact that he did fall asleep and awoke hours later with fewer aches and pains. I don’t know what he took, but now I have the nasty cold so I am suspicious that whatever it was just transferred the sickness to someone else, namely me.

I think next time I will be one of those women who packs everything but the kitchen sink for those just-in-case situations.

Put a stick in it and you’ve got a really big mop.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Early Evening – Moscow time

The morning started out with me delivering a 20 minute talk/demo on various cat handling techniques at the PractiVet conference. The vets in attendance were from Russia, Israel, and several nearby countries. The translating was done simultaneously by 2 or 3 interpreters seated at the back of the conference room. All attendees wore headsets to allow them to hear the translation in their own language.

The cat I was supposed to use for the demonstration got caught in traffic (a regular occurrence in Moscow), so Natalia somehow talked an exhibitor from the International Cat Exhibition show going on next door to allow me the use of her cat.

I was provided with a lovely Oriental SH with a wonderful disposition. I was tempted for a moment to hide the cat in pocket and take him home with me. But I considered that there might be undercover KGB present at the veterinary symposium and a stunt like that might land me in jail. This was Russia after all. In the movies those sorts of things happen all the time.

I demonstrated the Air Muzzle, and from what I could tell, this was an item they had not seen before. One lady in the audience asked a question afterward. She sounded very angry when she did so, which left me wondering if maybe she thought I was hurting the cat by putting the Air Muzzle on it.

But Simon explained to me later that she was saying she did not think it would fit over a Maine Coon’s head. I don’t know what Simon told her, but unless they have 80 lb Maine Coon’s in Russia, the Air Muzzle should work out just fine.

Saturday, February 20, 2010       middle of the night – Moscow time

There have been snowflakes falling pretty much since we got to Moscow.  And obviously for sometime well before that since the whole city is covered in snow and there are places with drifts higher than I am tall.  All of these snowflakes make me think of a big flake we have in America.  You know, that politician that made a movie about global warming.

Well, maybe our big American flake needs to check out the weather channel. Or take a trip across the globe. Because from what I can tell, a good portion of the planet is covered in snow.  When I left South Carolina a few days ago there was snow on the ground.  This rarely happens in our state.  During the flight to JFK, pretty much all of the ground we flew over was covered in snow.

All land that we flew over as we crossed the Atlantic and then over parts of Greenland and northern Europe were COVERED in snow.  The in-flight thermometer informed us that the air temp was -90 degrees F.  I do realize that was at 35,000 feet in the air, but still.

It was so cold in Moscow that it sucked my breath right out of me whenever I tried to carry on a conversation outdoors. Global warming?  Whatever.

Friday, February 19, 2010        Late evening – Moscow time

A few days before we left for Moscow, Mike was at the hair salon getting his hair cut.  The dude that does his hair told Mike that Russian women are particularly  beautiful.  In fact, he said they are the most beautiful in the world.  He suggested that Mike needed to go to Moscow WITHOUT his wife.  I surely hope that Mike did not leave this guy a tip!

Fast forward 5 days.  We are in Moscow and I ask Mike to photograph the lecture.  Imagine my surprise when I am scrolling through pictures that he took and find this one.  I reminded him that he was SUPPOSED to be photographing my lecture so how did this pretty blond woman end up in the mix? Hmmmmm?

He tells me she stepped in front of the camera just as he snapped the shot.  I am suspect of this.

While Mike’s hair stylist guy is not on my “favorites” list at the moment, I have to admit that he was right about the Russian women.  I might forgive him.

caught!

Friday, February 19, 2010      early evening – Moscow time

From what I could tell, nothing was lost in translation today.  For the first time ever, I conducted a lecture with an interpreter.  It took a few minutes to get into the dance of it all, but once we found our tempo we were off.

Of course I only know what I said to the crowd. I honestly have no idea what the interpreter said (I forgot his name.)  But from the feedback that we got, he either taught an informative program, or he did a fantastic job of translating what I said.  I caught him ad-libbing once when I said something that was not funny and then, once it was translated, everyone laughed.  I asked the fellow what was so funny because I didn’t think what I said was all that funny.  He smiled and said he made a cat joke. Hmmmm….one can only guess.

It was hard to cut my lecture down to half of the normal time, taking into consideration that it would all have to be repeated in Russian.  But this also gave me plenty of time in between thoughts to decide what I might say next.  I had to forgo the jokes.  I wasn’t entirely sure if they would make it through the translation process, and was afraid I might end up being the only one laughing.

A local breeder, exhibitor, and TICA judge brought two LH Scottish Folds for me to use as demo cats.  I did a lion cut on a nice red tabby boy and gave him some of my signature pom poms down the tail.  He was agreeable to most of it but also got a bit testy at times. This was a good thing because I was told the audience really wanted to see me handle an aggressive cat.

I made the mistake of wearing a nice outfit for the occassion, forgoing my usual grooming garb for the demo part of it.  This meant that, while I shaved down Mr. Red Tabby, I became one myself.  I do believe the hair multiplied as it was transferred from the cat to my clothing.  It took 1 1/2 sticky rollers to get out enough of the cat hair that you could tell what color my tights were.

The audience was amazing! They had some excellent questions at the end and would have kept me there for a long time if I had not gotten kicked off the stage so the next speaker could do her thing. (Sorry Kitty!) When it comes to cats, I can talk for days.  Just ask my family.

Afterward I was invited to speak at the veterinarian symposium the following morning, doing a short demonstration with a live cat to show some handling techniques.  This was quite an honor.

When the show was over, Mike and I bundled up and made the 10 minute trek through the wind and snow back to the hotel.  This morning I had opted for fashion over practicality. This meant that I suffered with each step through the snow and ice and heels much too high for such conditions.  By day’s end my feet were killing me.  But hey, the boots looked good so what if I had to endure pain and suffering and risk slipping on the ice and breaking my neck?

On the way back I told Mike that all this walking in the snow must be good for my glutes because I was kinda sore.  I visualized my butt getting in shape during our visit to Moscow, simply from walking in the snow. No exercise involved. But my dear husband reminded me that the day before I had slipped and landed on my arse.  Well then, dash a girl’s hopes.  So much for the buns of steel.

I am tired.  Beyond tired really.  But the hotel is warm, and my belly is full. I hope that we sleep through the night because Mike was kind enough to share his nasty cold with me.

Friday, February 19, 2010    Mid-afternoon – Moscow time, and way to early in the morning for me!

Now I know why Europeans drink large amounts of strong coffee…….it’s because they have their days and nights mixed up.  They are awake and trying to work and do things while we are all in bed getting our rest.  How crazy is that?

I, personally, do not care for the backward European schedule and, while trying my best to adapt to it, have been unsuccessful.  This means that in the middle of their night I am wide awake. This also means that they do ridiculous things such as scheduling my lecture when it is really 3:00 am and I should be snoozing away, getting my beauty rest. But nooooooo……instead I was wrangling a cat and trying to keep track of important information. This takes a great deal of effort.  And a lot of strong coffee, which I’m not particularly fond of.  But one does what one has to do no matter the cost.  And that’s all I’m going to say about that.