Michele Berdy - When the Cats Are at the Dacha ...
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Friday, September 1, 2006. Issue 3488.
When the Cats Are at the Dacha ...
By Michele A. Berdy
Играть, как кошка с мышкой: to play cat and mouse with someone
As dacha season winds down, it's hard to give up the joys of country living for the big city. Fresh air, the gentle sound of wind in the trees ... relaxed afternoons in the sun ... evenings on the terrace ... breakfast in bed...
If you are imagining me reclining and waiting for eggs Florentine and the morning paper on a tray, think again. At my dacha, the cats bring me their idea of a hearty country breakfast: a small creature delivered right in bed, sometimes dead but more often alive. The dead ones get dispatched; the live ones get scooped up in a specially designated rodent receptacle and deposited at the end of the street, where hopefully they will go on to lead long and happy lives, full of adventure less fatal than what my cats had in mind for them.
Over the years I've been made present of hundreds of полёвки (voles), кроты (moles), мышки (mice), землеройки (shrews), птенцы (fledglings), стрекозы (dragonflies), and once even a squirrel (белка) that was larger than the cat that dragged it in. There is one other animal that shares our yard that they won't go anywhere near: ёж (hedgehog). The cats figured out quickly (and presumably quite painfully): Look, don't touch.
Russians regard the comical, waddling little hedgehog with particular affection, even though the little guys are among God's most stupid creatures. Понятно даже ёжику! (It's as plain as the nose on your face!). In English you might also say "it's a no-brainer" or, if you are feeling a little more sophomoric, you might condense it to: Duh!
Over the years of having to rescue rodents, I've had ample time to contemplate the subject of mouse expressions. Some are like English expressions, such as: Он беден, как церковная мышь (He's as poor as a church mouse). Russian has several idioms connected with the great cat-and-mouse game. The most common, играть, как кошка с мышкой (play a game of cat and mouse), is what I think of as a one-way equivalent. You can translate it from Russian into English using the same expression: Ольга играла со мною, как кошка с мышкой. То она кокетничала, то она вдруг меня отталкивала. (Olga toyed with me like a cat with a mouse. She would flirt and then suddenly push me away.) But the English expression can also mean "to play hide and seek," so "the border guards play cat and mouse with illegal aliens" might be in Russian: нелегалы играют в прятки с пограничниками.
When you want to indicate that someone is a mouse and not a man, you can use the phrase: на мышку и кошка зверь (literally, to a mouse a cat is a beast). Его начальник очаровательный, мягкий человек, но он его боится. Ну, что ж: на мышку и кошка зверь. (His boss is a really nice, gentle guy, but he's afraid of him. What can I say? Even a cat seems like a beast to a mouse.)
For some reason, the Russian expression for "when the cat's away, the mice will play" is not very common. But if you want to show off your knowledge of folk idioms, you can say: без кота мышам раздолье (literally, without the cat, there's fun for the mice).
If you need to point out that someone is so low down on the food chain they won't even be noticed by the higher-ups, you can use a nice old saying: Директор фирмы не станет тебя ругать. Слон мыши не гоняет. (The head of your company isn't going to yell at you. An elephant doesn't chase after mice.)
Thanks to my thoughtful cats, even though the season is drawing to an end, I can continue to think about country critters in the city. The last time I hauled a bag of books back to my apartment from the dacha, I found a dead mouse at the bottom of the sack. Еда на дорожку! (Food for the road!)
Thanks, guys.
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
posted by Kate @ 4:08 PM
1 Comments:
Забавно! Читала и смеялась. Спасибо!
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