Audio script

I’d like to talk about my two cats who are called Misha and Masha and they are nine years old, and, because I work for the British Council and I have worked in lots of different parts of the world, they are quite international cats; so they were born in St. Petersburg, Russia around the dawn of the Millennium, in the middle of winter. And St Petersburg winters are very very cold, it’s kind of minus 30 degrees, and some friends of mine found these two tiny little kittens in the snow and brought them in and then sent an email around the office saying ‘who can look after these two cats’. And my wife and I already had two cats at the time from Indonesia, erm and we thought can we, have we got room, can we adopt these teeny cats and then we saw them, they were just so cute that we couldn’t say no, so we brought them home and so they lived with us for like two years in Russia, and then we moved back to the UK and they had to stay in France for six months, erm, just to check they didn’t have rabies...erm before they were allowed into the UK. And then they lived with us in Cambridge and we had a cat flaps so they used to wander about it. When it came to leave the UK, we discovered that they in fact had about five or six different homes and made friends with all kinds of people along the street they used to go and get fedded (fed), get stroked or cuddled by all our neighbours. Then we moved to Mexico and we had a house with a garden so we had to build a special fence that kind of curled in on itself so that the cats would climb up and then feel that they were starting to fall down so they climbed back down again. And then we moved to Guangzhou…erm this time last year so now they are ‘flat cats’, erm, they’ve not been squashed, they just live in our flat, live in our apartment and they don’t go out…erm they just go out onto the balcony, but the interesting thing is that their personality has seemed to have changed in every country they live in. So Masha used not to be very friendly towards people, as she’s got older, she’s now quite a cuddly cat. And they’ve adapted to live in…being a kind of free to roam about and then being in the garden and now they seem to be very happy just being in a flat.

Glossary

the dawn of something (noun) - the start of a period of time

the Millennium (noun) - here it refers to the year 2000; and actually "millennium" is a period of 1000 years

adopt (verb) - to take another person’s child into your family and legally make him or her your own child

rabies (noun) - a very serious disease which affects the nervous system of dogs and other animals, and if humans are bitten by an animal with this disease, it can also be fatal.

cat flap (noun) - also known as a "cat door", which is a hinged flap fixed into a door or window to allow cats to enter and exit a house on their own

wander (verb) - to walk around in a relaxed manner

stroke (verb) - to touch or to move your hand gently over skin, hair, or fur

cuddle (verb) - to put your arms around someone and hold them in a way which shows that you like or love them

squash (verb) - to press or crush something into a flat shape

cuddly (adjective) - a person or an animal that looks attractive or soft and makes you want to cuddle them

roam (verb) -  to move about without a particular purpose

Discussion

If your job allows you to move from one country to another one after a certain period of time, in which countries would you like to work and why?

It is sometimes said that cats are "aloof and indifferent" whereas dogs are "loyal and friendly". Do you think so?

If you are going to keep a household pet, what would it be?