Peace Corps Flashback - Cats!
As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco in 2000 -arguably the genesis of my career as a worldchump- there were two things I quickly learned about animals. Over there, people just didn't have pets. This was as foreign a concept to them as Fez hats still are to us. What, you have a cat in your house? And you actually FEED it? Ugh, it sure smells in your house.
Dogs didn't have a chance in Morocco. These were strays that were treated worse than orphans. I don't know what it is with Moroccans and dogs, but they never mixed. Cats were only slightly better off. At least they had been discovered killing a lot of the vermin that plagued them. Okay, so they were useful. But not useful enough to warrant an invitation into your house. Or uselful enough to have any of them fixed.
Every day, I would walk to the Youth Center I worked at and find a new kitten that had been left for dead. Mommy Kitty never had enough milk for an entire litter, not without a steady diet of wet food, dry food, or any food at all. If the mama had five kittens, she would take one along with her and leave the other four to fend for themselves. Cruel, yes, but these are the laws of Mother Nature, a mommy far more powerful than the maternal cat I just mentioned.
So, I am thinking. Here's a little CUTE kitten, it's clearly been left to its own wits. What to do? Okay. here, kitty. Have a seat in my pocket here, why don't you? We'll worry about food, drink, and bed once you get home. Unfortunately, this scene repeated itself as often as Groundhog Day, which meant that I soon had more kitties in my apartment than Hemingway. Luckily I had a patio, so they didn't have to stay indoors all the time. In time, I would feed them, raise them, and eventually give them up for adoption. The first such cat I had adopted died only last year. You can't begin to describe just how lucky the other cats were. From the streets of Beni Mellal to a haven for pets and the U.S. Jackpot, if there ever was one.
Here in Bongo, I now have two cats. We recently moved, and I found that our property had a cat who was VERY MUCH ATTACHED to the place. Although this kitty was tiny, it was feisty and quickly sent my two scurrying back inside. None of my kitties wanted a piece of her. Fair enough, I'm thinking. The territorial male cat. So the territorial male cat hung around. And the territorial male cat gave birth to five kittens a week later. Good God.
I first heard the kittens from our balcony and thought, Oops, I hear kittens. Probably outside of the gate. Wrong. There were five kittens crawling around in the mud outside, each of them heading in a different direction, not to mention a certain death by either the elements or any potential predators. I sighed and dropped my head. Five more kittens. At my age. And I get to provide shelter and food for them. Lucky me. These little bastards better make me patron saint of all cats if they are as divine as they think they are.
Fast forward by four weeks. The kittens are still all alive. They live in the little patio outside our kitchen window where we keep the garden tools. Mama Cat -by now, she goes by the name Joan of Arc- is a proud mother and takes good care of her five kittens. The kittens themselves are distrustful and hiss at me like snakes would, but they are alive. I suppose they can afford that kind of behavior with their mama nearby.
One evening Liebi wakes me up. The kittens are distressed, I hear meowing from all over the place. Just what are they carrying on about, Liebi is wondering. It turns out Liebi is looking everywhere but on the roof, twenty feet above the ground. Turns out yours truly was responsible for them being up there. I had left a latter against the wall after climbing up the wall the day before, and a couple of kitties used the opportunity to explore a little. Of course, once they reached the top of the house they understood they were in trouble. Any tree out there couldn't have done a better job.
So I climb up the ladder and approach the kittens who are hiding in the rain gutter. So will the kitties accept my help? Heck, no. One of them escapes down one floor and leaps the remaining ten feet to safety and her mama. The other one, a gray tabby, decides she will stand and fight. Eventually she hides in the gutter...the vertical part of it, unfortunately, and falls twenty feet through it until I hear a light meow at the end of it. The gutter doesn't open at floor level, so now I have to play fireman besides provider and foster parent. I push a hose through the hole, pull it back up, and here comes Kitty, clinging to it like Tarzan to a vine.
Will she be taken now? Nope. Her next step is the one over the edge, where she falls twenty feet to the hard tiles below. Dead? Nope? Limping? Nada. Did this kitten just use up two of her lives? For sure, at the tender age of four weeks.
The next day, the five kittens play and nurse with their mama as if they had merely visited a yarn factory the day before. I still love cats and adore kittens. If only they would hurry up and grow up now.
Dogs didn't have a chance in Morocco. These were strays that were treated worse than orphans. I don't know what it is with Moroccans and dogs, but they never mixed. Cats were only slightly better off. At least they had been discovered killing a lot of the vermin that plagued them. Okay, so they were useful. But not useful enough to warrant an invitation into your house. Or uselful enough to have any of them fixed.
Every day, I would walk to the Youth Center I worked at and find a new kitten that had been left for dead. Mommy Kitty never had enough milk for an entire litter, not without a steady diet of wet food, dry food, or any food at all. If the mama had five kittens, she would take one along with her and leave the other four to fend for themselves. Cruel, yes, but these are the laws of Mother Nature, a mommy far more powerful than the maternal cat I just mentioned.
So, I am thinking. Here's a little CUTE kitten, it's clearly been left to its own wits. What to do? Okay. here, kitty. Have a seat in my pocket here, why don't you? We'll worry about food, drink, and bed once you get home. Unfortunately, this scene repeated itself as often as Groundhog Day, which meant that I soon had more kitties in my apartment than Hemingway. Luckily I had a patio, so they didn't have to stay indoors all the time. In time, I would feed them, raise them, and eventually give them up for adoption. The first such cat I had adopted died only last year. You can't begin to describe just how lucky the other cats were. From the streets of Beni Mellal to a haven for pets and the U.S. Jackpot, if there ever was one.
Here in Bongo, I now have two cats. We recently moved, and I found that our property had a cat who was VERY MUCH ATTACHED to the place. Although this kitty was tiny, it was feisty and quickly sent my two scurrying back inside. None of my kitties wanted a piece of her. Fair enough, I'm thinking. The territorial male cat. So the territorial male cat hung around. And the territorial male cat gave birth to five kittens a week later. Good God.
I first heard the kittens from our balcony and thought, Oops, I hear kittens. Probably outside of the gate. Wrong. There were five kittens crawling around in the mud outside, each of them heading in a different direction, not to mention a certain death by either the elements or any potential predators. I sighed and dropped my head. Five more kittens. At my age. And I get to provide shelter and food for them. Lucky me. These little bastards better make me patron saint of all cats if they are as divine as they think they are.
Fast forward by four weeks. The kittens are still all alive. They live in the little patio outside our kitchen window where we keep the garden tools. Mama Cat -by now, she goes by the name Joan of Arc- is a proud mother and takes good care of her five kittens. The kittens themselves are distrustful and hiss at me like snakes would, but they are alive. I suppose they can afford that kind of behavior with their mama nearby.
One evening Liebi wakes me up. The kittens are distressed, I hear meowing from all over the place. Just what are they carrying on about, Liebi is wondering. It turns out Liebi is looking everywhere but on the roof, twenty feet above the ground. Turns out yours truly was responsible for them being up there. I had left a latter against the wall after climbing up the wall the day before, and a couple of kitties used the opportunity to explore a little. Of course, once they reached the top of the house they understood they were in trouble. Any tree out there couldn't have done a better job.
So I climb up the ladder and approach the kittens who are hiding in the rain gutter. So will the kitties accept my help? Heck, no. One of them escapes down one floor and leaps the remaining ten feet to safety and her mama. The other one, a gray tabby, decides she will stand and fight. Eventually she hides in the gutter...the vertical part of it, unfortunately, and falls twenty feet through it until I hear a light meow at the end of it. The gutter doesn't open at floor level, so now I have to play fireman besides provider and foster parent. I push a hose through the hole, pull it back up, and here comes Kitty, clinging to it like Tarzan to a vine.
Will she be taken now? Nope. Her next step is the one over the edge, where she falls twenty feet to the hard tiles below. Dead? Nope? Limping? Nada. Did this kitten just use up two of her lives? For sure, at the tender age of four weeks.
The next day, the five kittens play and nurse with their mama as if they had merely visited a yarn factory the day before. I still love cats and adore kittens. If only they would hurry up and grow up now.
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