The Mops of our Building
It’s Monday evening and I’m tired from a semi longish day trying to persuade my  students to engage in the learning process so I’m offering another instalment of Mops of Shanghai.
This first set of mops is from just at the entrance to our building. There are usually a few there, balanced atop one another, drying in the sunshine. They have a good life. They seem happy, by mop standards.
And the mops at our gate, outside the massage house
These ones are at the gate to our building (the entrance is round back), belonging to the massage parlor that occupies the bottom front portion of it. Â They don’t seem as rested or calm as the entrance ones. Dishevelled, a bit scraggly, with only a fire hydrant to perch on. They have each other.
The Weekend Kibble Buffet
Back at the entrance to our building, we find the weekend cat buffet. It seems to only come out at weekends and I’m guessing there is free flowing champagne as well in the guard house. During the week, the cats only get a small tray with a handful of kibble from a jar in the utility room.
Captain Rainbow, our gatekeeper
And this is Captain Rainbow, the primary cat of our building, the cat with fabulously mismatched blue and green eyes. There are other cats that come and go, all related in their whiteness. Captain Rainbow is our constant though, and can be found in the bushes or, when available, parking spot #10. At our old flat, we had a family of ginger cats who were also well catered to. That whole mythology about Chinese people and cats and stir fries (probably based on famines/deprivation/great leap forward agrarian miscalculation) does not apply here. Â These cats are well tended to.
8 Responses
If Captain Rainbow has one blue and one green eye and is all white, then he is probably deaf?
True…99% of cats are with those features
I’ve heard that too but don’t know about him- he won’t say.
I totally associate mops with China now that you mention it, even with Chinese supermarkets here. Why is that?
Because they are there? More than anywhere else I’ve been, China has more obvious mops out in plain view.
This is such a nice post. All-around.
As for your question about not being able to post your web address in my “comments” section, errr… I really wish I knew! I’ve spent some time trying to figure it out – thought going to Settings–>Comments would yield some options for me to choose from on the matter, but no. And I couldn’t come up with search terms got me any related results in the Help section. I’m very new to this blogging thing, so I’m really not sure. I would like it fixed, though, so I’ll keep tinkering…
Thanks for actually looking into the situation– I was just wondering, not being critical 🙂 Your comment section allows for google and livejournal logins, which I’ve used, but they would lead people to my blogs there and I try not to do that (too personal or waaaaay out of date). I’m never sure if you’d know who I was if I commented under another web address so I was hoping to be consistent in my ID. Thanks for trying!
I loe the whole mop thing. It’s great to see old fleece pullovers recycled into mops. Or whatever it is that gets cut up into pieces.
The cats in our lane only get day old rice, I might let them know there is a great weekend deal going on over at your place…
Indeed, I’m sure it would be the more the merrier, kibble-wise. Plenty to go around! And not too far to commute from Nanchang- we are on the corner by Yongjia and Jiashan.