Before moving to Sweden, one of the things that always made me mildly jealous was hearing from Annika about the various cats she'd run into on her way to and from class and stopped to pet. Back in Minnesota, I basically never saw a cat unless I visited friends who had one. I guess it's more the thing to do to have indoor cats in the US, but let them roam the neighborhood in Sweden.

Since being here, I've gotten to know a couple cats that live with our neighbors and one or two others along the way to places we often visit. Most of them are skittish, but there are a red one and a grey one who are consistently friendly. In any case, we don't often see any aside from the two that live in the next building over.

Tonight, though, we saw plenty of them on the way home from the grocery store.

First, there was a dark lump on the right side of the path which I suspected might be a cat early on and turned out to be right. It was mostly black with brown stripes and seemed to be just about to decide we were OK when a bike came by and scared it away.

Then there was a big fluffy one on the left that just sat and watched us, but didn't move beyond turning its head. As we walked over to see if it would want to play, Annika pointed out that there was another cat, with short grey hair and a white chest, sitting in someone's garden about 5m past the fluffy one. It just sat and watched us, too.

The fourth cat was one we've seen before, a very cute red and white kitty that hangs out on the hill by its people's garden. It's never let us play with it yet, so Annika didn't want to stop and try calling to it. It was asleep, so I didn't want to disturb it anyhow, but it was curled up in a little ball in a hollow on the hillside, so I had to stop and stare for a minute.

About two blocks from home, another unfamiliar kitty, this time sitting on top of a fencepost. I started walking over to see if it was friendly and it meowed softly at me, so I meowed back. After a couple of these exchanges, it jumped down and walked a winding path towards me, darting back a little whenever I moved, until it finally got close enough to sniff my hand - then it ran off and continued talking with us, but did not approach again.

And, finally, we ran across the brown and white cat which lives with our neighbors. It usually seems pretty afraid of us and started running parallel to our path as soon as it saw us. We stopped and called to it and it ran by us, passing fairly close behind me like it was going to come around the other side of me to be petted, but instead kept going on the other side and "hid" behind a small tree, about the thickness of one of its legs, as if that would keep us from finding it...

So, six cats in one day, but we didn't get to pet any of them. I'd say that's a record for both the most sightings of and the most rejections by the local feline community.