February 23, 2018 – News from the registrar, snow and cat pics

February 23, 2018March 23, 2018 Catlady Life9 Comments

Hello dear friends!
First off the good news! Yesterday, the registrar called and informed us that the certificate from the British embassy (German: Ehefähigkeitszeugnis), which verifies that Ralph is legally free to marry me, has been accepted by the Graz registrar office.

What a relief! As I wrote in my previous post, the registrar office told us back then, that the embassy certificate might not be accepted, which came as a total shock to us. The British embassy issues hundreds of these certificates every year in Austria, so we assumed it was a standard thing the Austrian registrar offices deal with often, especially in bigger cities like Graz, which is Austria’s 2nd biggest city.

Anyway, thankfully that worry is now gone, and we’re getting a bit closer to getting married. What remains now, is to get the last batch of bureaucracy sorted out, that they asked of us. We need to get Apostilles for all of Ralph’s English documents, as well as certified translations by a court-approved translator of the same documents. Once this is done, we will send the scans of it all off to the registrar, and then we can finally get married within a few business days.

I don’t really know how long it will take to get this done, but we really hope it won’t be long.

Now it finally seems within our reach. Let’s just hope that the last things can get done easily, without additional bureaucracy, to get the Apostilles that we need.

In other news… It has been snowing a lot! I haven’t experienced such weather for over a decade or more. We had days with heavy snowfall since the start of the new year. But now, we’ll have snowfall for the next 2 weeks, and the temperatures will drop over the weekend to around -15°C / 5°F according to forecast.

Here is what it looks like from our balcony, overlooking the backyard and garden.

February 20, 2018 8:23am — Snow in the garden, February 20, 2018

22.02.2018 17-33-57 — Snow in the garden, February 22, 2018

22.02.2018 17-31-31 — Snow February 22, 2018

Samantha and Sonic watch the snow fall from the windows, but they don’t feel like going out onto the balcony at all. Samantha ran out for a second, curious as to what that “white stuff” on the balcony is, but turned right back around once she realised the “white stuff” is wet and cold.

Murli, on the other hand, does not care, and still likes to go out onto the balcony with us. Of course, Murli has thick and quite long fur, and Samantha has not got much to keep her warm. Sonic and Samantha are from southern Spain and not used to the cold.

07.02.2018 08-26 — Murli does not care about getting snowed on. She wants to watch the birdies!

All three kitties are happy and feel at home. Murli is so much better with the others too and she continues to get better and more relaxed with having other cats around.

13 02 2018 9-13am — Sonic on the bed, and Murli on the window.

I am so happy to have my Murli girl here with me, in our home, within our little family. We all love our new apartment, our home in Graz. But we can’t wait to finally put just one family name on our door: Whillier. Natascha and Ralph Whillier. It will be such a happy day once we have our long-awaited wedding!

The other thing we can’t wait for is spring and summer! But for now, spring seems a bit far away. The following slideshow shows what it looks like at the moment. It’s the park near our home.

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Thank you all for reading and for your wonderful and supportive comments, it really made us feel better. I will keep you updated a lot more from now on, as to how things are going with our quest to get married.

As I’m about to go to sleep now, I wish you all a good night. Take care and keep warm!

Everything · Murli the cat · Pictures · Videos

April 27, 2017 Catching up

April 27, 2017April 29, 2017 Catlady Life21 Comments

Yay! Today is the first day of me feeling normal and awake again. For the past two weeks, I had been ill again… Due to a bout of the shingles, which thankfully were not bad. I had chicken pox as a child, so since then I had that Virus in me. In the first days before anything became apparent, I had severe fatigue and I just didn’t feel right at all. Then at the end of the Easter weekend, the rash started, but just a very small area on the right side over my ribs. Went to the doctor right after the Easter weekend and got a Antiviral and pain meds prescribed. Thankfully the antiviral medicine was able to prevent it from actually breaking out fully, since the treatment was started early enough, and because it was a mild case.

The medicine made me very tired though. As long as I did something I was ok, but as soon as I would sit down and start to read or write, my eyes wanted to close. Many times over the last week, have I fallen asleep while sitting on the couch with my ipad… Hilarious!

I’m finally feeling fully awake again today. Hopefully I’ll have a good phase without migraines for a bit, because there’s so much I want to do and I’m looking forward to be able to catch up with all of your lovely blogs, as well as with all our furends on instagram and twitter ❤️️

Murli is doing purrfect! But she’d love to have more days with comfortable temperatures and sun puddles to nap in. Unfortunately, our weather here in Austria, and other parts of Europe, continue to have unusually cold weather. First there was the stormy and cold weather I wrote about. Then a few days with milder temperatures and a bit of sun followed. The Foehn wind was howling again on Tuesday and brought warm air from the south. The next day, the Foehn wind was gone, but the temperatures were falling again, which created more wind, just not Foehn wind. Today it’s grey, dark and rainy. The mountains are also getting snow again and it’s possible that we’ll get some of it as well.

But we will enjoy a cuddly and comfy weekend. Murli on my lap, and a coffee next to me, I’m not complaining at all. The only thing I worry about is how animal and plant life are coping with that kind of weather.

Here is a video I took on Tuesday, as the Foehn Wind was howling through the door. Murli isn’t afraid of those things, as they’re happening all the time and she’s used to it all. But her little nose is sniffing into the air, as the air current brings all kinds of smells with it I’m sure😸

In the video, Murli is about to get her meal, and she knows of course. I was about to go into the kitchen, when I decided to film that howling of the wind. I’m kind of sure she’s thinking what I’m doing there filming the door, instead of getting her meal ready lol…

I also wanted to show you one of the trees that grow on the river bank, that had fallen during those stormy days after the Easter weekend. I came across that fallen tree on my way to a grocery store. There were many fallen trees more along the river banks. But I’m kind of sure that the trees that did fall due to the wind, were already weakened in some way. (You can click on the images to see them in a larger view)

I also found a left over Christmas tree 😂😹 I had to think of Siddhartha Henry’s LadyMum Sherri-Ellen of nylabluesmum.wordpress.com when I saw that Christmas tree, because we were talking about exactly this kind of thing shortly after Christmas and how people throw Christmas trees down the river banks and into rivers and all kinds of other places lol.

Hope you all are doing fine! Murli and I wish you all a pleasant Thursday!

Everything · Murli the cat · Pictures · Places · Social media · Videos

April 19, 2017 7:30pm Cold like winter

April 19, 2017April 19, 2017 Catlady Life15 Comments

Hey furends!

The weather got worse over night. The already cold wind we had these days, got much stronger today and even colder. Central Europe has gotten some really cold weather. The Alps, the valleys in between the mountains, and the surrounding areas of the Alps got a lot of snow. The temperatures dropped in general, and a very cold and strong North wind is blowing. Unfortunately, the fruit harvest is in danger of being destroyed again, like last year where up to 95% of the fruit harvest got destroyed by frost damage in late April. Which of course drove prices for the remaining regional fruit way up. A lot of people here love their regional food, and prefer that over imported food.

Some farmers try to save their trees from frost damage, by lighting small contained flames in between those trees. It just has to rise the temperature enough to keep it above freezing. They are out there day and night, keeping an eye on the flames and watching over their trees.

The streets around the Alps are totally in chaos, as it’s snowing like crazy and many people had already removed their winter tires and are now in heavy snowfall with their summer tires.

That’s the pretty amazing blue sky we had before the clouds came.

The following pictures were taken on Tuesday afternoon at 3pm. I was on my way back home from picking up some food for Murli at the Vet. The cold wind was blowing so bad at times, that it was really not funny. My hands became numb from the cold too. Thankfully I made it home before any rain came. But, the rain never came for the city. It must have come down farther south.

Today the wind is even stronger, and just as cold. This afternoon, someone forgot to close their outer windows, and so the window panes were flapping wildly and banging into the wall in the strong wind, and got busted. Now there’s broken glass on the pavement, right beside the entrance to our building.

At around noon, when I was at my doctors office, I kept hearing the noise of the wind blowing through the branches of a very tall tree, that stands in the middle of the block of buildings. Within such a block of buildings, there are often gardens and trees. That’s how they used to build many of the city blocks in old European cities.

Anyway, because I was amazed at that tall tree swaying like that, and the sound the wind kept making blowing into the branches of that tree. So I went out onto the balcony there and hoped I would be able to capture that sound with my iphone:

Murli is having a lazy day today. No wonder she feels better cuddled up on my lap, or somewhere else where it’s cuddly warm right now. She didn’t even get to enjoy a few sun puddles to hang out in. Even though the morning was seeming a bit more friendly and partly sunny for a short time, it was way too short. Murli enjoyed the fresh air though. She just rather sits a little below the window when it’s cold and especially when a cold wind is blowing. Otherwise, she would sit on the window sill like usual MOL. So I hope you all have a nice evening and you’re warm and comfy with your lovely kitties!

Everything · Murli the cat · Pictures · Places · Videos

April 5, 2017 1st Thunderstorm of the year for us

April 5, 2017 Catlady Life5 Comments

Hi furends, we hope you’re all fine! Yesterday, in the afternoon, we had the first thunderstorm of this year, and it was a really bad thunderstorm too.

It was sunny and warm until about noon, when it started to become more cloudy. Later at 2:40pm, as I went to go to my doctor for my monthly pain med script, I failed to look out of a window before I left. I didn’t bring my umbrella and also wore the exact wrong shoes for rain lol. As I walked around the corner to the main street, I was able to see the sky in the north… What I saw where dark thunderstorm clouds… But I didn’t care to turn back to get my umbrella and just hoped to make it back before the rain.

I took the usual short cut through the big property of our church. Even though I was in a hurry due to the looming thunderstorm, I had to stop as I walked through the inner courtyard of the church and adjacent monastery because of this:

The tree that grows in the middle of the courtyard was in full bloom! It’s gorgeous! Absolutely beautiful! And now I actually have photos of all 4 seasons with this lovely tree. I had been taking pictures of this tree for years, but always missed the phase where it blossoms. So I took a couple of pictures of it, and went on my way, out into the huge parking lot.

This is the dark sky I saw to the north-west…

Not even half a minute after this picture, the rain started, with huge raindrops. But it was thankfully not a heavy rain at that point and while I was at my doctor’s office for about 10 minutes, the rain had stopped. So made it to my pharmacy and then back home pretty much dry.

It started and stopped raining a couple of times until about 4pm. Then the sky got even darker, and I could hear thunder in the distance. That thunder was coming closer and closer. I watched as the workmen on the roof across from us scrambled to get everything secured and off the roof before the storm.

At about 4:30pm the heavy rain and hail started. I filmed the beginning of it…

Knowing that it was going to get worse, I stopped to get away from the window with Murli. I could see what kind of bad stuff was heading our way on the radar images on the weather site I check usually.

The red arrow shows the approximate area where we are. It’s a huge thunderstorm, and the radar map shows my whole state of Styria with its counties. The white border, where the arrow points into the middle, is the outline of the city area of Graz. The second border around Graz are the suburbs and surrounding areas of the city, which is its own county. The red arrow just points to the center of Graz, where we live. But the area is many miles across. So the purple part the arrow points to was huge and it directly went over us. The purple color, with its darker shades of purple in the center, shows that it’s the worst category possible. Especially the darker purple part was exactly over us. On the bottom of the map is the color scale.

Like in the video, it was all hail and rain at first. Shortly afterwards the lightning got really severe. It was almost constant lightning, and all really close. The mobile phone tower a bit down the street got hit a couple of times, as usual. No big deal for it, since they’re made to withstand it without trouble. But seeing how the lightning strikes it, with a loud bang and thunder. Since it’s so close, there’s almost no delay for the sound of the thunder and the strike to reach you.

Murli isn’t afraid of thunderstorms. It doesn’t faze her at all. Not even if it’s that bad. She finds it entertaining to watch the rain and the hail. But I picked her up and carried her away from the window and went into the kitchen with her. I’m not even sure why I do it, but I feel like it’s not safe close to a window with that many close lightning strikes going on. Some lightning rods on houses must have been struck too from the sounds of it. Thankfully all buildings have lightning rods, including ours. But yeah, for some reason I always feel the need to go away from windows, which is why I rarely film the lightning going on, even though I would love to film it.

The sad part of this all is that we planted lovely spring flowers on Mama and Granny’s grave, as well as on the grave of my Papa’s parents, my other grandparents, all loved very dearly. We planted those beautiful flowers just last week, but I fear they have taken a real bad beating by that severe hail yesterday. The hail was so bad after I stopped filming, that the streets were white, as if it had snowed almost. The hail was the size of hazelnuts, but it was lots of hail. It also lasted for a long time. We’ll take a look at the flowers tomorrow or on Friday. We would have gone today, but I had another migraine and Papa had appointments to go to.

This was the sky today in the morning when I got up. It started raining soon after, but it’s just harmless rain.

Murli enjoyed the “Builders channel” on “Kitty TV” again a little later😸 Because it had stopped raining and the workmen came again to work on the roof.

I think I rambled on long enough for now… Sorry it turned into a relatively long post with many pictures… But I really wanted to share that with you lovely furends! Murli and I wish all of you a nice afternoon and evening❤️️

PS: I had migraines almost daily again this week… I hope I’m finally getting a break from it, because I really want to catch up on all you furends pawsome bloggies and comment! Hugs & purrs!

Everything · Murli the cat · Social media · Videos

January 8, 2017 Murli playing near the tree (Video)

January 8, 2017January 12, 2017 Catlady Life

Murli playing next to the tree💗 She does everything next to, or under the Christmas tree😹 No matter if it’s cleaning her fur, playing or just rolling around on the floor, she specifically goes to the tree😸 She will miss that tree once it’s gone… We’ll keep it as long as it’s possible, just so she can enjoy it more😸💞🎄💞

Catlady Life

Natascha and the Cats

Tag: tree

February 23, 2018 – News from the registrar, snow and cat pics

April 27, 2017 Catching up