My Best Day and Worse Day, The Same Day

About two weeks after mom, Mark and Cindy left I got a call from my good friends Aidon. He said that he was at the front gate and that the guard would not let him in. I went to the gate and Aidon was carring a sack. I talked to the guard and he finally let him in. Then he handed me the sack and said, “Well, you said you wanted a cat”.
I took the bag and opened it up and staring back at me was the most beautiful set of neon green eyes I have ever seen.
Since it was late the guard would not let Aidon come back to the apartments so, I thanked him and he went home. I brought the sack inside of my apartment and let the cat out. She was not a full grown cat but she had to be at least two months old.
When I let her out she hid under my bed and would not come out. I set out some water and bread, since that was all I had that a cat could eat. She would not come out that night so I went to bed. It was funny though because I kept hearing the cat hit her head on the bottom of my bed. It took me a little while to realize that she was really using the bottom of my bed to rub and scratch her head.
The next day was devoted to setting up my apartment to have a cat. I went out and bought some daga (dried minnows) and I bought a round container to put sand in for a litter box. I was pretty much set. I brought it back to my apartment and she ran and hid as soon as I walked in.
I situated myself on the floor trying to coax her to come out. I would place my hand under the bed and try to pet her. Once she realized that, that was all I wanted she slowly came out. She would let me pet her head, but she would keep they rest of her body under the bed.
She also liked to hide in one of my suitcases in the corner. I would find her and not take her out, but just sit there and pet her in her space. I was amazed form day one because as soon as I would touch her she would start purring even though she was scared.
She gradually became accoustomed to me. I would be sitting in a chair in my room and she would hop on my lap between the book and my face to get my attention. She would also sit outside my mosquito net around my bed and meow at me to let her in. She quickly learned to get in and out on her own.
She was very playful and would keep my room bug free. She would lie and let me pet her and than all of a sudden she would be biting my hand. That was one thing nice about her. She would always play bite. It would never break the skin or hurt.
She was my friend. She kept me company when I was in a bad mood or if I was just relaxing. She would make every effort to be as close to me as I slept. She was my best friends.
She was all black except for a tiny spot of white on her back right leg. She had a scab there when I got her and it healed, but the hair was white. Some of my friends would come over to see her. If they were my wazungu (white) friends it would not phase her. She would rib up against their legs and want them to pet her, but if it was my Tanzanian friends she would want nothing to do with them, all except Adam ( the one that lives at Dira with his brother and his family). It was a running joke between me and the white people that live here that my cat was a black white supremacist.
When I got her I knew that something was wrong with her. She had a fleshy lump on her left back side. I had went to the Masi village and while I was there I talked to the English vet about it. He first suggested that I go buy de-wormer solution. The next day I went out and bought some and a needle and gave her a shot of the amount the vet had told me. I gave her the shot. It was not hard since I had grown up on a farm and had given animals shots before. The lump didn’t go away, but she did seem to get healthier. She put on weight and was doing well.
A while after that a Tanzanian vet came to stay at Dira for a short time. He looked at her and said what I had suspected. A part of her intestines were on the wrong side of her muscular wall. He said that she could have surgery, but since it was not sore he didn’t think that it was needed. She never really had problems with it.
She was my sole outlet for company when I was tired of listening to German all the time. She would even meow yell at me when I would come home late. I’m really not a cat person, but I loved this thing with all my heart.
About a week ago, Sunna a Finnish girl that had went to Tumaini and lived in the area for about 5 months came to stay at dira. She would only be staying three nights and she didn’t want to pay the 15,000 tsh per night, so I said that she could stay with me. Well, she unloaded her stuff and she left out a little plastic bag of ear plugs. The orange ear plugs, kind that you twist and put them in your ear. Not only that but one morning she left the door open and let the cat out. I woke up, knowing that something was wrong because my cat always climbed in to bed with me every morning. I got up looked around my whole placer and could not find her. I almost started to cry and freak out when I heard a meow out side my door. I opened it, looked out and there she was. She bolted back into my room.
Well, my cat decided to play with the ear plugs. I caught her and would take them array, but she must have eaten one. I noticed something was wrong when she would meow in pain when I would touch her stomach. I called Andy the English vet and he came over to give her a look over. He said that she did swallow something that was having a hard time navigating through her intestines. He said, that he would put her into surgery, but he didn’t have anesthesia because it is hard to get in Iringa unless you are people doctor. He also said that if it didn’t come out he would have o put her down. The only thing that I cold do was give her tuna fish in cooking oil to help coat her intestines.
After hearing all of that gave her some of the oily tuna. I had picked up a can in the market about a month ago. I gave it to her and she ate a little. I was so discouraged about this whole situation I pretty much sat around moped and wrote my finals for two days.
After that my cat was still not doing much better, so Andy came over again. He said that what ever it was inside of her had moved, so there might be a chance for her. I said, really I’ll do any thing. What can I do? He gave me a syringe and told me to fill it up with cooking oil and gat into her stomach. So, I did it. I felt so bad forcing oil down her throat, but if it could save her it would be worth it!
In the meantime I still tried to get her to eat the tuna and she would not touch it. I though we were in the clear when she did go to the bathroom twice in one day. But, as time when by she stopped eating anything.
I hated this whole situation. I had never experienced anything like this. Yeah, sure I have had animals get hit by cars but never anything like this. Well, when I was really little we had to put my cat Mitten down, but I barely remember that. I hated the thought that it was I who had to decide how and when my cat would die. I could let her die in pain, or I could end her suffering with one call to Andy. I waited a day since it seemed like she might be getting better, but she wasn’t. By now she was nothing like the cat that I had brought home months ago. She just spent her days lying on my extra bed sleeping. I would move over there to cuddle with her and could not help but cry. While I looked up in to those amazing neon green eyes and cold almost see the fire go out within them. I knew what I had to do.
Andy came over the next day and put her down. I was with her in our home, as she went. We had a late night funeral with candles for her and all my neighbors were there to help dig the whole.
It was a great day because I spent most of it in the market shopping with Ross and just hanging out. Earlier that day we had decided that we would walk up to Gangelonga rock to watch the sun set.
Inga, CHrissy, and I were the only ones that ended up going though. Ross had found out that he had malaria and he wasn’t up for it and Annika was traveling with her boss from the Berlin Mission. We headed up the side of the mountain and made our was to the same rock that I had visited the day that my mom, Mark and Cindy left.
We got up there and the clouds and the setting sun mixed to form the most beautiful orange I have ever seen. We were all sitting there when Inga and Chrissy pulled out a surprise for me. They had packed fruit, pudding and wine.
We sat there enjoying each others company in my last days. It was do relaxing and enjoyable! He I am over looking the city that I have called my home for the past six months and sitting with these two amazing people that I would have never met if I hadn’t taken that leap of faith.
We stayed up there and watched the sun sink slowly over the other side of Iringa. It became dark and we watched one by one as the stars pierced through the black blanket above. It will be those quiet moments with my friends I will remember forever.