I Wanna Talk-my two cats 我的两只猫

 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 Council¹ 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 Millennium², 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 flaps³ 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 stroked⁴ 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 curled⁵ 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 squashed⁶, 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 cuddly⁷ cat. And they’ve adapted to live in…being a kind of free to roam⁸ about and then being in the garden and now they seem to be very happy just being in a flat.

 

- See more at: http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/zh-hans/i-wanna-talk-about-0#sthash.3FLXmZjA.dpuf

1 council   

n.理事会，委员会，议事机构

参考例句：

• The town council passed a law forbidding the distribution of handbills.市议会通过法律，禁止散发传单。
• The city council has declared for improving the public bus system.市议会宣布同意改进公共汽车系统。

2 millennium   

n.一千年，千禧年；太平盛世

参考例句：

• The whole world was counting down to the new millennium.全世界都在倒计时迎接新千年的到来。
• We waited as the clock ticked away the last few seconds of the old millennium.我们静候着时钟滴答走过千年的最后几秒钟。

3 flaps   

（兽医）马唇肿胀

参考例句：

• The flag flaps in the wind. 旗在风中飘动。
• He was supposed to furl the side flaps in the morning. 他的任务就是每天早上把两侧的遮帘卷起。

4 stroked   

（用笔等）画（stroke的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• Jim stroked his beard reflectively. 吉姆沉思着捋了捋胡子。
• The girl stroked the cat. 这个姑娘抚摸着小猫。

5 curled   

adj.卷曲的，卷发状的，卷缩的v.（使）弯曲( curl的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）卷曲；盘旋；缠绕

参考例句：

• She lay curled up in a foetal position . 她像胎儿一样蜷曲地躺着。
• The snake was curled up in the long grass. 在深草中，这条蛇盘着身子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 squashed   

压碎的，压扁的

参考例句：

• The tomatoes at the bottom of the bag had been squashed. 袋底的西红柿给压烂了。
• I squashed a few more clothes into my case. 我往箱里多塞了几件衣服。

7 cuddly   

adj.抱着很舒服的，可爱的

参考例句：

• The beautiful crib from Mom and Dad is so cuddly.爸爸妈妈送的漂亮婴儿床真舒服。
• You can't call a hedgehog cuddly.你不能说刺猬逗人喜爱。

8 roam   

vi.漫游，闲逛，徜徉

参考例句：

• He used to roam the streets for hours on end.他过去常逛大街，一逛就是几个小时。
• I like to roam about over the countryside.我喜欢在乡间走一走。