“Kotyk” Means “Kitty” in Ukrainian

 Meet Kotyk! His name means “Kitty” in Ukrainian. Kotyk is a cat of Tania D’Avignon. Tania is very known American photographer of Ukrainian background. Her photographs have been published in National Geographic Magazine, USA Today, Boston Globe, Harvard Press etc. As Tania’s Facebook fan page said, “for the past 18 years the photographer has been sharing her time between Newton, Massachusetts, USA and Kyiv, Ukraine. A graduate of Maryland Institute, College of Art Tania has traveled the world with her camera. Her work has been shown internationally in more than 80 personal exhibits and published in hundreds of books, magazines and newspapers. She is the author of an album of photographs "Simply Ukraine" and a Fulbright Scholar.”

To all these titles I can add, I am so happy that I know Tania personally – she is a wonderful woman and amazing person, a mother and a grandmother, and I was very glad to find out that Tania is a cat person, like me! And she got a cat with very Ukrainian name!

I asked Tania to tell more about her Kotyk, and this is a story she told me – with a sad beginning and with happy-end.

So, Kotyk is 5 years old, he is from Bronx, New York. Tania’s daughter Larissa is a teacher in New York. One kid from school where Larissa works found this cute black-and-white kitty on a street and wanted to bring to school. School security took the cat from a kid on an entrance and explained, that there no pets allowed in a school. Larissa just happened to enter a school door, she heard a conversation and she convinced the school security to keep this kitty until classes are finished – she said, she will take a little fellow home. So she did.

The kitty was very weak and not healthy, but Larissa, her husband Volodia and husband’s friend took a good care about the cat and they brought him back to a great cat’s shape.

Larissa and Volodia were visiting Tania every weekend and Kotyk (that’s how they named the cat) was traveling with them. In few months everyone has noticed that Kotyk is behaving very interesting – when it was time for Larissa and Volodia to leave, Kotyk simple was disappearing and showing up at Tania’s place when they gone. So, it was only decision in this case – that cat will stay with Tania, period.

So he stays happily with Tania and, as I can see, he is catching a lot from her artistic personality. Take a look at the picture below – Kotyk is reviewing an art:

Kotyk also likes watching cartoons about mice on TV:

Kotyk is nice and polite – on the picture below he is wishing a Happy Valentine Day to Tania’s granddaughter Alanna:

And finally, Kotyk is peacefully resting in Tania’s arms, after working hard online all day. As you can see, he is advanced cat and he knows what technologies are! And he is just happy to be with Tania :)