Today's Moscow Times article

[alektoeumenides.livejournal.com]

Feline Fanciers Simply Love a Great Mouser

By Michele A. Berdy

Кошатник/Кошатница: cat lover, cat fancier.

For Russians, human beings are divided into two categories: собачники и кошатники (dog lovers and cat lovers). They allow for the odd fellow with a passion for guppies or parakeets (or who indulge in the fad for exotic pets, like pythons or marmosets), but basically they believe that you are destined to love a beast that thumps its tail or a beast that purrs -- it's one or the other.

For people who love animals as much as Russians do, it's odd that they don't have a simple word for pets; they are called домашние животные (literally "household animals") or питомцы (literally, "foster child," "charge"). But if you have ever watched a pensioner bring out a pot of lovingly prepared fish soup for the dining pleasure of the courtyard cats, or listened to a big burly guy coo to his German shepherd, you'll know that these people are head over heels about their pets.

If you are a cat lover, you either have a pedigreed cat (породистая) or a mixed-breed (метис). Although you can now find virtually every breed in Russia, from Siamese (сиамская) to an Egyptian Mau (египетская мау), domestic breeds include сибирская (Siberian, similar to a Maine Coon, with a thick coat and fur between the pads of its paws to keep it from slipping on ice and snow) and русская голубая (Russian Blue, to the American eye, a silvery gray color). To find out a cat's breed, you can ask: Какой породы ваша кошка (What breed is your cat)? Cats can be longhaired (длинношёрстная) or shorthaired (короткошёрстная, гладкошёрстная), striped (полосатая) or spotted (пятнистая).

Coloring is окрас. Russian cat fanciers describe their cats' coloring in such loving detail, you may have trouble keeping up with them. Она черепаховая с белыми носочками (she's a brindle cat with white socks); она лиловая с чёрной маской (she's silvery gray with a black face); у неё серый подшёрсток и чёрные полоски (she has a gray undercoat and black stripes). Three-color cats (трёхцветные) are considered to be lucky -- black cats are not.

Keep in mind that when describing your cat (or any animal), the face is морда. You can also use this word to describe a person's face in unflattering terms: У него морда как кирпич (he has a mug like a brick).

Given the cost of a pedigreed cat in Russia, most people have mixed-breeds, often rescued strays: уличная (a street cat), помоешная (literally, "a cat from the local dump"), брошенка (an abandoned cat, from the word бросать, "to throw away") or подкидыш (a "foundling," from the word подкидывать, "to stealthily give someone something" -- i.e., a cat in a basket on your doorstep). If you want to call over a street cat (or any cat), in Russian you say кс-кс-кс.

Usually, Russian describes the gender of the cat with the words кошка (female cat) or кот (male cat, tomcat), but when you talk about breeding, you call them самка (queen) and самец (tom). A litter is помёт: Сколько котят в помёте (how many kittens are in the litter)? This shouldn't be confused with a litter box, which Russians call лоток. You fill it with наполнитель (cat litter, literally "filler").

You can find pet supplies in stores called зоомагазины, which traditionally sell pet food, accessories, and sometimes fish, birds and small animals. These days, stores like this tend to have names like: Всё для животных (Everything for Your Pets). Once inside, most foreigners won't have much trouble negotiating the wares, since the majority of pet products are imported brands. But it is helpful to know that dry food or kibble is сухой корм and wet food in cans is called консервы.

Even if today most cats in Russia are more for companionship than work, they still fulfill an important task: catching mice. У меня кошка хороший охотник -- на даче она ловит до семи мышей в день! (My cat is a great mouser: At the dacha she catches up to seven mice a day). Mouse-catching can also be used figuratively in Russian. If you say of a person, он мышей не ловит, you mean: He isn't too swift, he's slow on the uptake.


Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.

Comments

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I have rarely heard the word "питомцы" applied to pets, but it's probably because I'd never had any pets myself, except of a dwarf turtle (черепаха) when I was 5 or 6 (the beast has escaped when we were at the datcha, which made me wish no other pets :))) My girlfriend has a dog (a VERY huge German sheperd) AND a cat (a Blue British tomcat). Her "simple word for pets" is "мои звери" (literally, my wild animals) or even "моё зверьё" (~~my wild beasts.) She also uses funny diminitive colloquials for her pets: she calls the dog (собака) "собакер" (as if it's a German or English term), and the cat (кот) is "кошак" (sounds Tatar, but it's a Russian colloquial or slang for a cat.) Her mother simply calls the dog "пёс" (literally, male dog,) but the cat is котейко (a very tender word for a cat from ancient Russian folk tales.) Surprisingly, both dog's and cat's names are English since they both are pedigreed, which means that they purchase them from breeding clubs (no idea how you call this in English :)))))): the dog is Grant and the cat is Randy.

[creta.livejournal.com]

помоешная (literally, "a cat from the local dump"),
ПомоеЧная

брошенка (an abandoned cat, from the word бросать, "to throw away")
It is very rare word IMHO. I never use it.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

yes, "помоешная" is more prononciation rather than spelling :) sounds like a real dialectism. The same with "брошенка": I've never heard it as well, but it definitely sounds like a dialect word.

[rimokon.livejournal.com]

What is a "dialect word"? Sorry, I'm slow, lol..^_^;;

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Most languages have dialects - local forms of prononciation and/or lexicon. Well, there is Australian English, British English (with its Yorkshire, Liverpudlian, Cockney etc. dialects) - and Southern American English is definitely not the same as, say, New York American English... The same thing is in Russian. A native Russian speaker could always tell a S.Petersburg native from, say, a Rostov native, because they speak different... During the last 150 years, Moscow dialect (or, to be more exact, Moscow educated speech :))))) became The Normative Russian, so-called Literary Russian. But different parts of Russia still differ in speech, though. Even some words are different in various dialects: for example, wheat bread is "белый хлеб" (literally, white bread) in Moscow, but "булка" (literally, a roll) in St.Petersburg... That's what I mean.

[rimokon.livejournal.com]

Ohhh...oki. Thanks. =)