Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
Text taken from a V Kontakte post by Irina Belokolos.
Author is Elena Evdokimenko.
[VK] Caught in a cart, I can't help but share) It's good that I'm alone here. I laughed like a mustang in the prairie. But no one came running to see if I hit my head))
Since I was often sick as a child, my grandmother (my mother's mother) decided to move from the Moscow region to us in Riga for a few months.
| Is this charming tale from the old days before the Berlin Wall fell? Because nowadays Latvia is no longer part of Russia. |
Prolly. Russian humor... It's different...
Together with her, the cat Barsik was to become a resident of Riga, because there was nowhere to leave the animal for such a long time.
We are crazy. We do not know that cats cannot just be carried on a train.
- They will drop off your Barsik in Sebezh at the border and he will go into the forest to feed wolves, - blurted out a neighbor in the compartment. She said it and fell asleep. And two people, an old man and a young one, remained sitting as if rooted to the spot.
Russian writer Pushkin once related a vignette where an individual was ordered to leave her canary in a cage off the train. The Tsar's regulations considered any animal, even in a cage to be livestock. Commenters on the original post said that current modern Russsian rail regulations require a veteranary certificate and the passenger must buy an extra passage for the pet.
We drank tea half the night, goggled at the darkness outside the window and thought about where to hide the cat ...
Barsik was mute. He couldn’t meow, much less scream, and that inspired us.
Grandma tried to stuff the cat into the bag of her hated neighbor while she was sleeping.
“Let him pee on her Orenburg downy shawl at the same time,” Maria Dmitrievna said, closing the zipper. But she changed her mind right away, since bags were sometimes searched. And even if they found him in other people’s things, we would still lose the cat.
I already imagined the scandal, how I would take a pose, loudly shout: “If that’s the case, goodbye!” and go crying on the night platform. But then God’s grace descended on grandma in the form of a brilliant idea. It was decided to give the cat valerian to drink so that he would become gloomy, and stuff him into her leggings, covering him with a robe on top.
That night Barsik got it. The fool savored the valerian, rubbed his face down on the floor, lay on his back and spread his paws in different directions. Granny turned him over, poked his face into the bowl and threatened that if he didn’t drink the dose right away, then in an hour the Sebezh wolves would scatter his bells along the railroad. However, it was difficult to scare the tipsy Barsik.
When the cat’s nervous system finally got slammed and he went limp, the terrible thing was ahead – to disappear into the depths of Granny’s tights. This didn’t work out. The cat didn’t hold on in the stomach area and slid down, creating the appearance that Granny had shit in her pants.
| Yes, that would be a problem… |
“No, that won’t do, Len, give him here,” Maria Dmitrievna opened her blouse, grabbed Barsik by the scruff of the neck, pushed him under her bra, fixing the cat’s head between her breasts. Barsik twitched in his sleep, but Granny gave him a slap on the ass so he wouldn’t forget.
“If they find me, I’ll say I put it on my heart to ward off the evil eye,” Granny said, closed the zipper all the way to her chin and sat down by the window.
“Are you carrying drugs, weapons, illegal substances?” the border guard asked.
“If only you knew, Uncle, what we’re carrying on Granny’s body to ward off the evil eye...” I thought, shaking my head.
We passed both borders safely. In the morning, we put the drunk cat in a bag and went home. I’d never seen Barsik so happy. Apparently, he didn’t remember about the leggings.
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