If I only had a picture...

It's been a typical Saturday here in Kirovograd.  I stayed up late last night skyping with Miss Katie Allison, so I somewhat slept in (til 9ish).  

Mary K!

Then, I did laundry by hand, watched a couple episodes of Monk, worked on a video from the HIV/AIDS training a couple weeks ago (get ready for it...it's almost done.  3 words for ya:  Ukrainian dance contest.  Hopefully will finish it tomorrow.), cleaned up the apartment some, cooked a little, etc.  Just my normal domesticated Saturday in Ukraine.

So, at 6 pm I decided I'd finally go for a jog since I had been putting it off.  Today was the first day where it actually felt like fall outside, so I put on a pair of leggings underneath my Nike shorts to run in.  If I had gone out in shorts, the STARES I would have received from the babushkas would have been enough to make me go back inside. It was probably 70 degrees out, so I would have been fine in shorts, but that's not the point of this post.

There is a school behind my apartment that has a small (janky) track.  It is actually paved, but there are trees surrounding it, causing the pavement to crack.  There are also numerous fruit tress (apple, apricot, and maybe pear) in addition to nut trees (chestnut, which I now can identify!) that cover the track.  That means that I am constantly dodging squashed fruit and nuts that I could probably break my ankle on.  So, yesterday, as I was jogging, I noticed a cat creeping in some tall grass by the track.  (For my family, it reminded me of a gray cat, Maxi, that lived in the Downs in Alabama, who was notorious for creeping up on chipmunks and attacking them.  My dad and I would watch her slowly creeping through the grass nearly every morning before school.  Back to the original story...).  This was a peculiar site to me because in Ukraine, there are cats and dogs everywhere.  However, you don't see them ready to attack very often.  I jogged around the track again and it was still slowly creeping...I watched it do this for a good 5-6 minutes.  Finally, on the next lap around, it skittishly crossed in front of me...

WITH A MOUSE HANGING OUT OF IT'S MOUTH.  

The tail was pretty much the only thing I could see, but still, you got the idea of what was in there.  It proceeded to eat the mouse in the center part of the track, looking at me ever so wearily, like I might take its' prized dinner away.  Don't worry Mr. Feline.  I promise I don't want to have anything to do with you.

If only, I had my camera.