So I have a cat, which is news because in America I was really allergic to cats. But after several months (and tentative feline encounters) in Malawi, I have come to the conclusion that I am somehow NOT allergic to the cats here. Don’t ask me how that works, I don’t know. But there is just no reaction here.
Palibe vuto. Pepani.
So after being in Chiwamba for awhile, I started asking around, theoretically of course, about how one might obtain a kitten if one so wished…..you know, in case I develop a rat problem. Not because I’m lonely, no…..not at all J Several weeks went by and I forgot all about it. Then one Sunday coming back from church, I was flagged down by my neighbor, Wilfred.
“Alfred came by your house with a package, but I told him you were gone so he just left it with me.”
This ‘package’ was a 50 kilo grain sack which had been recently used to carry charcoal and was covered inside and out with soot. It appeared empty, but was tied at the top.
Oh yeah, I thought, this is my new baby.
Only it wouldn’t come out of the sack.
After a while I ended up dumping the bag upside down, releasing a plume of soot and one tiny gray, ashy furball, which immediately ran under my bed.
Alfred came over to check on it.
“It’s an azungu cat,” he said. Once it licked itself clean I could see what he meant. Most of the cats here are all black, but this one was mostly white with black spots.
“I picked it out just for you,” he grinned.
After a few hours, the furball let me hold it and it lapped up warm water and bits of dried fish (usipa). It cried when I put it down and slept tucked under my arm that night. I started calling it “she”, because in my mind, all cats are female, and also because it was so small, I honestly couldn’t tell what it was. And I didn’t want one of our first bonding moments to be a thorough anatomical search.
Wilfred came over and dubbed her “the luckiest cat in Malawi” after watching her eat nsima and usipa. I tried to think of a name, but I couldn’t settle on one. I just called her Kitty. This was of course short for her full name of ‘Itty Bitty Kitty Committee’.
For awhile I kept Kitty just inside, but after a month of staggeringly fast growth (she wasn’t Itty Bitty anymore), I grudgingly decided that she should get to know the outdoors. Her first venture outside was thwarted by one of Wilfred’s hens, wandering through my garden. Kitty saw the hen and darted back in under my bed, hyperventilating. It took a couple weeks before she realized that the hens were in fact supposed to be afraid of her, not the other way around.
One thing she always remained afraid of, though, was strangers. Wilfred found it hilarious that she could be rolling around contentedly in the dust one second, but as soon as he appeared, she dashed away.
“Your cat doesn’t like Malawians,” he said.
“That’s impossible, she’s a Malawian cat.”
“I mean she doesn’t like black people,” Wilfred laughed.
Oh goodness, I’m a terrible parent, I thought, I’ve raised a racist cat.
A racist, gender confused cat. Because of course kitty turned out to be male. But I still call it ‘she’. Force of habit.
Itty Bitty Kitty got bigger and bigger until my friends were all making jokes about how for sure I must be fattening her up to eat her. Now instead of bits of usipa, she can eat a whole handful in one sitting. I still cook her nsima, if only so I can truthfully tell people that I DO cook nsima. Wilfred gave me a bag of ufa wa chimanga- homegrown maize flour- to feed her. When that ran out I tried to buy more ufa in the market. As soon as she heard it was for Kitty, the seller just laughed and handed me a bag, no charge.
“That must be the luckiest cat in Malawi,” she said.
Today, after a marathon session of clothes washing, I was relaxing in the house knitting and listening to the BBC. Just like with a toddler, once I realized I hadn’t heard Kitty in a while, I started to worry. I headed outside to find her having cornered a toad by my latrine, thoroughly entertained by the fact that she could make this thing jump just by tapping it with her paw. She wasn’t hurting it, just tap-tap-tapping as it jumped around.
“Good job kitty! You discovered you can hunt! (Sort of).”
I scooped up the toad and moved it out of my yard, releasing it into some bushes. Last week, I had heard people yelling outside my fence, and turned around to see a three foot long orange snake winding toward me from the garden. The people were trying to warn me that it had entered my yard. Kitty was unfazed, and trotted behind it like a sheepdog herding it’s charges. She herded the snake right though out the other side of my yard, though I have a feeling that’s where it was headed anyway. Kitty got extra usipa that night.
Kitty was righteously angry with me for taking away her toy toad, until she saw the dirt beckoning and forgot all about me to take a nice dirt bath. Every night she licks herself clean and snuggles back under my arm. That’s my sweet Kitty.
