Sarge's Little Adventure

Yesterday morning I was on my way to Kabira to internet and Bea followed me up to the car. “Where’s Sarge?” I said and Bea ran over to the wall running along the edge of our property. I heard a meow from the other side. There’s a small grate near the bottom corner and I looked through this and there was Sarge, on the wrong side, seemingly stuck. “Come back the way you came,” I told her and took off. I figured she needed to figure this one out for herself.



I came back a couple hours later and there was no sign of Sarge, no meowing from the other side of the wall, so I went inside and did some work. Bea slept on the desk next to me and we whiled away the afternoon. Around 4:00 PM it seemed strange that we hadn’t seen Sarge all day, so Bea and I went back to the wall and called for her. After a few minutes I heard Sarge’s meow. Bea pawed at the grate and said, “Meow,” very concerned and I was like, “Dude, I know,” and Bea was like, “Meow,” and I was like, “I’m on it.”



I walked around to our front gate and out to the road. A man sat outside the house next door. I explained the situation.

“You think you have a cat inside?”
“I know I have a cat inside. I saw her.”
“And you want to go inside?”
“Yes, please.”
“Oh, yes! I saw a cat this morning. The dog was chasing the cat.”
“You have a dog?”
“Yes, the dog chased the cat. It was very funny. They run, run, run.”
“You have a dog?”
“But the dog could not catch your cat.”
“Can I just pop inside and get her?”
“It is a white cat?”
“Yes. I know she’s in there. If I could just go get her…”
“And you want to go inside?” He thought about this. “Yes, the dog was chasing the cat this morning. What do you think? She wants to go inside.”
I turned and there was another man standing across the street. He considered me. “There is a cat?”
“Yes, my cat has been stuck in there all day. She doesn’t know how to get out.”
He sort of shrugged. I looked back to the first man.
“So you want to go inside,” he said, again. He grinned at me.
“Please?”
“Let me go inside and see if she is really there.”
I waited outside the gate. He came back.
“The cat is really there!” He sounded surprised.

I walked down to the very bottom of the yard where Sarge cowered in the drainage grate. She was covered in dirt and burrs and spotted with some sort of yellow substance that I hoped wasn’t pee. I picked her up and held on tight. The man escorted us out and Sarge was terrified of him. She was also scared of the cars that passed as we headed down the road back to our place. She scratched and clawed and left me covered in muddy paw prints. But then there was Bea waiting in the yard for us and everyone calmed down. “Meow,” Bea said and I was like, “Tell me about it.” Then I locked Sarge in the house while Bea licked her back to health and that night they both slept like kittens.

Poor Sarge

We’ve just started letting the kittens outside and a few days ago Sarge came home looking like this.



I assume she got stung by something, she seemed quite itchy, but it looked like she got into a bar fight. Thankfully she's all better now.

Fixed

On career day in seventh grade, I opted for the session with the heart surgeon. He showed us a video of an open-heart surgery. I thought it was fantastic. For the next few years, I decided I would be a heart surgeon.

This morning the vet came to the house to tie our kittens’ tubes. Not in love with the idea of surgery being performed on my writing table, I asked if there was another alternative. The vet said he could take the two kittens away and bring them back when it was all over - i.e. our house or his. J and I discussed it and felt better about one of us being there with the kittens rather than sending them away. So I cleared off my table and held each of the kittens when their turn came to go under the knife.

I’m not sure where the heart surgeon in me has got to, but I couldn’t watch.

As I write this, it’s been a long afternoon. They can’t seem to settle down and sleep. They’ve been wandering back and forth across the apartment on unsteady legs, falling over every few steps and in the process breaking my heart repeatedly. They seem to be looking for something; I suppose they want their brains back working normally. Or their ovaries?

Family Reunion

Not this past weekend but the one before, we had a third kitten in the house. Aunt Bea and Sarge’s brother, Koozi, stayed with us. Koozi is taller and lankier; he spent the weekend totally housing his sisters. The first day was all whines and cries from our two girls, even when they instigated the attacks. But as the weekend progressed, Koozi went a little easier on them, everybody eventually got quite friendly with each other and Koozi even taught them a few tricks.

Getting cozy:


Sarge took notes on this one (Bea is still not much of a climber):

An Abundance of Beatrices

When we lived in New York, we wanted to get kittens but the apartments we lived in were never suitable for them (i.e. they were very small). But we did come up with names. Originally they were going to be Beatrice and Gus. Fast forward two years and we are in Uganda and there are two kittens up for grabs and we have the names all picked out except that in the meantime my brother has named his kid Gus. Beatrice was always a given.

Except that people actually use that name in Uganda. In Zanzibar we met a woman named Beatrice. The other day in the Ugandan newspaper I read about a woman named Beatrice. Just now, a woman named Beatrice rang me up in the store. Also, last night I was reading Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco and the narrator tells his girlfriend she’s his Beatrice. Being delinquent on my Dante I had to look up that Beatrice was Dante’s muse.

Before moving here I had never in my life met a Beatrice, aside from the fictional Ramona Quimby’s fictional sister.

Worst Parents Ever

Turns out Sarge is a girl. At least now I can stop worrying about any incest happening before we take ‘em in to get ‘em fixed. (Actually, the vet makes house calls. Neutering on the kitchen table! Bet you can’t wait to see those pictures.)

I'm reminded of when I was in kindergarten and we went to Bermuda for vacation. My brother had a guinea pig named Bucky, who we sent to a friend's house for the week we would be away. Just as we were leaving for the airport we received a call, which I remember this way: "Bucky had babies!...and then she ate them." And then Bucky became Buckina.

Sargent is going to remain Sargent, for now.