On Saturday, after living in our new Wohnung for about 5 or 6 weeks, Andy and I finally got around to having a flat-warming party.

I may have ended the invitation with: Please respect our culture, and remember that the traditional housewarming gift of Australia is the presentation of small live kitten(s) to the Man of the House.

Which explains this:

and this…

 and even this:

 but does lead to some confusion when considering this:

 and also this:

EXCELLENT!…. It all gave me great amusement, especially the way everyone solemnly presented their cat related items to the HausMann! I should note that the mouse is actually a cat toy, which is filled with catnip, so presumably we can just put it outside for a few hours and the kittens will come to us?

In a similar vein, Marta, Magda and Kris also gave us some cat grass (photo now with bonus fingerpuppet!):

(Cat grass in a CAT POT!!, very good show!)

Here’s what was in the kitten bag- hopefully not at all related to cats (although there were questions of what we would do with all the acquired felines):

All in all I was very very impressed by the commitment to the theme, and it was a generally lovely evening.

(We had a Macca! (+ TWO Sabines!))

Thanks to everyone for coming- and thank you for all the (generally hilarious) gifts… and for all the delicious food that was also brought along- cherry pie and pasta salad and orange and poppy seed muffins and…the much alcohol including Aussie wine and Polish mead!