Kittens on the Porch

Mommy cat & kittens on claimed corner of porch

Our island has a very large cat population. They aren’t pets. No one feeds them when they are hungry. No one takes them to the vet when they are sick. (Are there even vets here?)  Many cats don’t make it to adulthood. Those that do tend to be thin and battle-scarred. The nights are full of the noises of cat fights  and because no one spays or neuters the cats, there are always kittens around.

You may think us heartless, but more than once we have found small bedraggled kittens by our house. We could easily have adopted them, but we’ve always resisted the urge. Cats are tolerated for their rodent catching abilities, and maybe even for good luck, but islanders don’t treat them as pets. We’ve had several teammates and colleagues who have taken cats on as pets.  islanders seem to find this very amusing, but don’t seem upset by it, but many have also seen cats die (from fights or disease) or have been burdened with kittens that they can’t find homes for.

For us, we don’t mistreat cats, but we’re not going to adopt any. In our opinion, it is better if they learn to take care of themselves and if they make it, they make it.

We’ve had a lot of rain this week. After the first few storms, we noticed a young mother cat and two kittens by our gate. By the end of the week, they had settled onto the ratty old mat that sat under a table in the corner of our porch. We’re curious how long they might stick around, but for the moment they’re making life kind of interesting.  We’d be hard pressed to kick them out (they would most likely just come back anyways) and we have to admit, the kittens are cute. One is mostly black, the other is calico (which we’ve been told repeatedly by the kids means it is a girl—apparently only female cats are calico…)

The kittens

Aside from enjoying the normal sort of kittens antic that you might expect, we’ve had a few interactions that are worth mentioning.  It began the night after they arrived on our porch.  The mother cat would leave the kittens on the porch to look for food and they would of course meow for her return when they got hungry. Late into the night we heard one of the kittens meowing and meowing.  It was like an alarm.  Finally Tom got up to see what the problem was.  Wow, that kitten was loud.  It almost sounded like it was in the house.  But Tom looked around and didn’t see anything.  The meowing had stopped as soon as he entered our daughter’s room (whose room opens onto the porch near the cats).  Tom returned to bed and the meowing started again just as loud. Next Megan went in and she saw it, a tiny and scared kitten inside the house near the window.   It immediately ducked for cover behind furniture. It took waking up our daughter, getting a broom and fishing it out from under a bed with it hissing and swiping at us before Tom literally pushed it out the door, back onto the porch and back to its mama. Finally it was quiet and we went back to bed.

After that incident, however, the kittens seemed to decide that we weren’t so threatening. They stopped hissing as much and even let us pick them up.  We’ve had to pick them up a lot this week because although we don’t mind them taking shelter on our porch, we don’t want them peeing on the cushions out there. So we’ve been regularly taking them off of our porch furniture and putting them back on the ratty old mat in the corner.  Since we moved in, we’ve always propped the porch cushions up at night so stray cats won’t pee and poo on them (which happened our first weeks here).  So the other night, I grabbed one of the cushions to put it up and remarked— “Did this cushion get wet? It’s so heavy.” It wasn’t wet, it was full of kittens.  They had wiggled their way inside a hole in the cushion cover.  I’m not sure if they could have gotten out without us.  We had to reach in and put them back on the mat. 

We decorated for Christmas!

Well if we’ve suffered some inconvenience from this new arrangement, they have also suffered some. Our youngest loves animals and we’ve caught him unintentionally terrorizing the kittens a few times. I came out on the porch to see my 5 year old with a  bucket, picking up a kitten by the tail and unsuccessfully trying to get him into the bucket. I quickly told him to put the poor kitten down. He did and it ran for its life. Then I looked down and saw the other kitten crouched in the bottom of the bucket. We’ve told our son to stop tormenting the poor kittens.

So all and all, it is almost like we have cats right now. No, we haven’t adopted them. No, we’re not feeding them.  No, we’re not welcoming them into the house. But they are welcome to the safety and refuge of our porch. We’ll see how long the kids resist naming them.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Ma Imani’s mom is feeling much better. The package from our family arrived!! It was sent in September— so it took its time but it got here before Christmas! Thanks for praying. This is one of the hottest months of the year, but we’ve had a lot of rain which has made it feel cooler than normal. The consultants for the language workshop arrived safely and they were able to cover a lot in the first week of teaching.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
A lot of people are sick right now. There have been several people involved in the language workshop that have been sick or distracted by sick family members— pray for health and freedom from distractions during this second week of the workshopOne of new teammates was hit by a bad tummy bug—pray that she won’t be discouraged and will regain her strength quickly. Also there is a bad flu going around hitting lots of people. Pray for health and healing all around! Pray for us and our new teammates as we work on getting their longterm visas and try to track down their landlord to fix some problems in their house. We’re working to finalize our plans to go to mainland Africa in January (where Megan will most likely have surgery)- pray as we work out logistics and schedule with doctors there.