HAVANA (Reuters) -- Convalescing Cuban leader Fidel Castro is trying on his uniform, taking short walks in his hospital room to loosen up his numb limbs and has a healthy appetite, visiting friends said.

"I am just returning from seeing him in uniform ... it really struck me, when I saw him standing in his uniform I stopped dead in my tracks and said: 'Fidel, what's this?'" Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said in a interview aired on Cuban state television on Monday, but taped on the weekend.

He said Castro had regained his "thundering voice" and people should prepare for him coming back into public soon.

Castro has not appeared in public since emergency surgery to stop intestinal bleeding in late July forced him to hand over power temporarily to his brother and designated heir Raul Castro for the first time since their 1959 revolution.

"We walked about the room," Argentine lawmaker and journalist Miguel Bonasso said in an article published by Cuba's ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma.

"I have to get rid of the numbness," he said to Bonasso. Photographs showed the octogenarian Castro sitting in a rocking chair in pajamas and dressing gown, with his shoes on.

Castro is following current affairs closely and has an aide reading wire dispatches to him, Bonasso said.

Castro received also the leaders of Iran, India, Malaysia, Algeria, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, as well as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his hospital room.

Castro's undisclosed illness was blamed on overwork. Cuban officials denied he has stomach cancer.

Castro lost 41 pounds (18 kg) after surgery, but has recovered half the weight loss, Chavez said after seeing him on Thursday.