"The Great Feline Relocation Experiment" by Melissa

Forward

As I stated in my previous post, there is a new kitty in my house.  Also, as I promised, the interesting story of her journey from Chinteche to Uliwa has come.  I could recall the entire experience from my point of view, however, I feel that there is no way I could beat the wonderful writing styles of Melissa, so the following is taken from her blog post series The Great Feline Relocation Experiment/Adventure (No More Saying Someday).  With this forward and an epilogue by me.

As any of my readers will already know, June was an extremely adventurous month for me.  Between World Cup Qualifiers, brewery tours, planning training, welcoming new trainees at the airport, spending a week and a half at PST, and then getting recalled to Lilongwe by the office and stuck there for the weekend, I had a lot on my plate.  I spent a total of about 8 hours in the north in that entire month, and none of that time being in my house or even in Karonga district.  Needless to say, I was ready to get home and back to my wonderful daughters, Fletcher and Tako.

Well, as I’m spending time in PST about a week before realizing my dream of sleeping in my own bed, I get a text message from Melissa saying the new home for her own ‘daughter,’ Zen, fell through and now she has a very pregnant cat, strong cat tranquilizers for moving her, but nowhere to take her.  In a previous conversation, she had mentioned how she would love to see me take her, but we both dismissed it as “too late” to change the plans, and there was also the fear of how she would get along with Fletcher and Tako.

Well, now that Zen was homeless, my Veterinary Nurse side (a.k.a. sucker) reemerged and I couldn’t help but to offer to provide her with a new home.  There is a delightful and helpless kitty that needed a loving home; how could I say no?  So, I offered and Melissa was delighted.  The only problem that presented itself now was the need to transport her at some point that fit into both Melissa’s and my own crazy schedules.  Well, after chatting casually with Dr. Max, he said a day or two at a close friend’s house would be good way to unwind after such a long month and full endorsed me traveling to Melissa’s for a day, which would also allow me to help her move Zen.

After an incredible hitching day (I set a new record from Lilongwe to Melissa’s house, which is amazing given my bad hitching luck), I found myself with Zen purring on my lap and giving me nose kisses.  Obviously, she was unaware of what was about to happen to her.

The Story (by Melissa)

“Zen has to travel over 200 kilometers to her new house, where she will (unhappily, I’m sure) join another pregnant cat and a pregnant girl dog (seriously, Nick has got to be crazy to take my cat into his very full house, but I’m not going to try to talk him out of it. He’s the only one who truly understands ALIEN KITTY.). The biggest challenge will be keeping Zen calm on a bus. She is perfectly capable of shredding my hands to bits and making everyone on the bus miserable with her yowling; this is fine, as long as she doesn’t also go into labor. I’m going to struggle with saying goodbye to my little girl already; I can’t handle also causing a kitty miscarriage.

So, I’m doing what any sensible human being cat mom would do: turning to drugs.

The vet says (in his strange text message language: Wen u b in d ofc?) that it’s okay to sedate a pregnant cat, but I’ll have to give her the injection myself. Okay! Here we go!

What I wasn’t prepared for was that her eyes wouldn’t close.

I went to the vet last week to pick up the sedative. Using a lamb calendar photo he showed me where to inject the drugs, which turned out to be an anesthesia cocktail that guaranteed me one hour of hard sleep with up to three hours of grogginess (and would get me arrested for possession in the United States of America). I would have to repeat the dose on the road. I reminded myself that the plan was not ideal, but it was the best I could manage. If she and I could be so lucky, she wouldn't remember anything.

Nick came to my house early and Zen was in open lap heaven; she spent a full day alternating between our laps for as much love and face rubbing as she could get. She’s very keen on belly rubs when she is this pregnant, her skin stretched tight and tired, and she lolled around on her side so we could feel her babies wiggling beneath her fur.

 Nick added sheets to her normally single-toweled basket for extra cushion for the road, and Zen loved her little nest so much she neglected to come to my bed for the first time ever (well, the first time ever where a litter of kittens wasn’t vying for her nocturnal attention). I woke at 3:30 missing my cat cuddles and Zen wandered in groggily when I clicked into the darkness. She cuddled against me, purring loudly, her babies moving against my tummy. It was our last true moment together.

Soon the time came for departure, and Nick held her down while I prepared the syringe. I’ve never seen a cat so calmly accepting of a human holding her by the nape of the neck and the hind legs—calm and still, that is, until I slid the needle into her thigh and injected the painful liquid. Then she kicked like a cartoon rabbit.

She stilled as the medicine entered her system. Her pupils dilated to the size of coins and her eyes lost focus. She did not blink. She stared off into the distance and as I stroked her all I could think was, she’s dead—oh jeez I killed my cat—I love this cat so much and I’ve killed her—she’s dead! – I knew I shouldn’t have trusted the vet to measure the dose without knowing her weight.

But she wasn’t dead. She was breathing, her heart rate slow, her body cooling. Her gaze was lifeless; her eyes, open, always, seemed to haze over, dry out; like paint drying poorly and bubbling on the surface. We gave her some eye drops and occasionally manually blinked her eyes, arranging her gently in the basket before trekking to the side of the road to find transport.

The bus was absurdly crowded. The aisle was bursting with human bodies but we managed to heave up our bags and squeeze onto the bus steps. Helpful passengers tried to grab Zen’s bed sheet-wrapped basket so they could toss it onto the growing pile of katundu, but my claws refused to retract.

It’s a cat, I explained blandly, It’s a cat. No one heard or cared or understood, so I switched the local word for cat. Pus, I said, pusi pusi.

Oho! They responded, laughing. Pus pusi! Oho! Pus pus on bus!

Suddenly drugged unconscious Zen became pus pus bus mascot. Her basket was passed overhead and deposited at the front of the bus in my friend Manasseh’s lap, way too out of it to realize what a lucky girl she was to have that seat as I was wedged between two bodies and had a chicken pecking my elbow and Nick was holding a stack of suitcases up with his back to prevent them from toppling over him and the agogo smashed against him. 

 

I’ve been in Malawi two years now and this was my worst bus ride. I stood for nearly 4 hours with just enough space for one foot touching the floor; I had no space to bend either knee; the temperature continued to climb as the breath and body odor filled the bus. As I got further crushed into the passenger crowd, Nick pushed himself up to the front and got alongside Zen, taking over basket duty. Occasionally I would chokingly call his name and acknowledge his thumbs up that my girl was still alive.

I’ve been here a long time and had a lot of harsh rides (imagine 27 adults in a mini van); I’ve become very comfortable with strange bodies against mine, children set in my lap, chickens under my feet, men across my legs, one set of toes touching the floor to keep my balance, baskets of fish scenting the air. I’m okay with perching on maize sacks and standing for long periods of time and using my knees to absorb shock. I can sit still for hours on end. I’m now comfortable with baby drool and urine, sweaty grown men, halitosis encounters, soiled baby blankets, crushed toes, adult vomit, spilled food. Considering I have had claustrophobic panic attacks under heavy blankets in the past, I’ve made pretty incredible progress. On this day, though, panic rose from my stomach and choked me, squeezing my throat; I worked my way through fevered alarm, verging on complete breakdown as bodies pressed against my legs, my stomach, my neck, my shoulders; the stench of body odor and mold rising in the wet heat and suffocating me.

I did what I always do on transport—turn up my iPod and try to regulate my breathing. Ignore the elbows digging into my kidneys and the accidental pulling of my sweaty hair. Nick had offered me his seat and I pondered the reaction I had had, brushing it off to be polite. Why hadn’t I taken the seat, sat with my kitty, petted her and blinked her sad wide open eyes?

Because she was his kitty now. Momma Nick was on duty.

I watched the green earth move slowly outside the fogged window as we crawled up the great hills leading to the city and I pondered Zen’s first bus ride. It was there, on that same bus, in the back seat. I thought of her curled up in the palm of my hand, tiny, sleeping, unaffected by the movement of the vehicle. I thought of her first encounter with a bold mouse; they both ran away from one another, terrified. I thought of her as a baby, falling asleep in my shoe, sucking on her tail as she kitten-snored. I thought of her hiding under my skirts as I washed dishes, following me into the bafa and ignoring the water raining down on her. I remembered her crying when I disappeared into another room, lost without me and scared I was gone forever. In my mind I calmly petted her face, stroked her ears, traced the tiger stripes and leopard spots hidden in her dark fur, calm with companionship.

Finally we emerged from the crush of the overloaded bus and into the Mzuzu sunlight on a dirt lot behind a ragged set of buildings. Zen had finally begun to stir—it took hours longer than the vet had predicted for my tiny girl to gain any movement. We took her to the cleanest place we could find, just in time for her to groggily pull herself up to sitting, eyes unfocused and lost. And there, in the AXA bus office, surrounded by confused spectators, we injected her with a second dose of drugs. My poor girl stilled once more, her eyes open and staring vaguely into infinity. We walked toward the bus depot and found a full mini bus on its way out of town. Nick jumped on and they were gone. My kitty girl, my little friend, my Zen, was gone. I felt the sting of tears and fought them away as I watched the bus turn the corner and disappear. Forcing myself to go numb, I turned away.

When I adopted Buddha, Zen refused to purr for a full week. She would generously allow me to pet her but declined any expression of fondness for me as she glared across the room at her new male roommate. After she left Mzuzu with Nick she made it over the escarpment before slowly waking up again and getting anesthesia-sick in the bus. Her new owner carried her three and a half kilometers home to her new village where she napped peacefully. This morning, just twelve hours after arriving at her new home, I received this text message: She’s up and about this morning. You can tell her eyes hurt, and she’s keeping them shut if she can, but she was very much able to open them and see me when I moved across the room so she could pursue me for more petting, which led to her signature loud purring.

Good girl, Zen. Good girl.”

Epilogue

After parting with Melissa, Zen slept in her basket while I rode in the backseat of the mini-bus for 30 minutes waiting to finally fill up and set off.  Normally, the seat next to the white person is immediately filled, however when it became public that a cat was in the basket on his lap (cats on transport being considered bad luck in Malawi due to their connections with witchcraft), it became difficult for the conductor to find someone will to put their superstitions aside and sit next to me.  Well, finally an educated bwana took the seat, greeted me, and we both began our normal three hours of riding on the most dangerous chunk of road in Malawi, the escarpment.

Zen slept the entire way down the escarpment, eliciting strong feelings of jealousy in myself.  Once we were down onto the Karonga lake shore, she started to show signs of life.  I considered injecting her with the last half dose of anesthesia, which undoubtedly would've been a spectacle on a Malawian mini-bus, but I decided to let her wake up a little more first, hoping (successfully) to avoid injecting this expecting mother with more medications than necessary.  She repaid this kindness of mine by vomiting the large quantity of usipa and "meat-rice" she had consumed the previous day.

Meat-rice is a foul smelling creation when it's still edible, and usipa isn't exactly going to be the new Calvin Klein cologne line, so you can only imagine how I should've reacted to this.  Interestingly, though, instead of reacting with disgust, the Vet Nurse came back out, and I cleaned her up as best I could given that we were crammed four-wide in the back row of a mini-van.  

I opted to carry her the 3.5km from Uliwa to my house instead of using a bike taxi so that I would be better able to monitor her waking up and for a smoother ride.  Over the course of the rest of the day, she slowly woke up locked safely away in one of my bedrooms.  The saddest part was when she was starting to walk around, so I offered her a little bit of water (supervised to prevent drowning), and she was unable to use her tongue to drink it.  I used a syringe to help her out.  By the next morning, she seemed full recovered.

I am happy to report that Zen is adjusting quite nicely to her new home.  She is not too fond of Fletcher, and mostly indifferent to Tako, both of whom are larger, stronger, and less pregnant than her.  Fletcher and Tako, however, are terrified of her.  Tako came into the house, Zen tried to greet her, and Tak hid until I opened the door that she bolted out, not to be seen for the rest of the day.  Fletcher, who wanted to be in the house, was so intimidated by Zen’s growling, that she put her tail between her legs and went a laid down in the corner.  Zen Girl definitely has some attitude that the other two respect.

 

She did get to crawl under the mosquito net with me the other night, and she has to be the funniest cuddling cat ever.  I was under sheet and blanket (it was in the frigid mid-70’s), so she crawled under the blanket, something I have heard of some cats doing.  However, she then curled up next to be and allowed on her head to come out of the blanket.  As if using a sheet like a human wasn’t awesome enough, she then lifter her head, looked straight into my eyes, and stared at me silently until I moved the pillow so that she could share it.  She immediately drifted off to sleep, a happy kitty in her new home.