Safari IV: Into the Serengeti

In the last post we had ascended out of the Eden of Ngorongoro Crater to begin the trek to our next destination: the Serengeti.

Before embarking on this grand safari I had of course looked at everything on the map, and charted driving times to try to get a sense of what our days would be like. But like everything experiencing it was something else. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Serengeti National Park are right next to each other; the signs reading “leaving Ngorongoro” and “welcome to Serengeti” nearly abut, or at least I remember it that way. The two ecosystems though seem like they could not be more different. As we climbed out of the crater we were surrounded by lush green. The road curves along the edge of a valley, and in the middle is nestled a small Maasai compound with their cows grazing next to zebra. But then you crest the hill and begin the long descent and the environment changes suddenly, the road twisting through a dry and dusty expanse of whistling acacia. Even in our enclosed and (nominally) air-conditioned safari vehicle, it was hot and bright and tiring to travel through. Still, life continues; at one point we passed a giraffe among the trees and across the road a Maasai woman selling wares to passersby.

Another surprise this trip was a brief stop at the fork to Olduvai Gorge. Until we were at the little rest stop and bathroom break I hadn’t realized it was so close. We didn’t have time to explore the cradle of humanity but it was still nice to have a miniature homecoming.

Eventually the Serengeti proper began and it was mesmerizing. Even without animals the landscape itself would be a fantastic draw. At the gate pictured at the top Obedi told us that “Serengeti” means “endless plain” (Wikipedia tells me this etymology is disputed) and endless it definitely seems to be. From the gate we drove straight for miles and miles through dry-looking grass broken up in parts by zebras and wildebeest and gazelle. Later on I watched a dust devil spin by. One of the things that most amazed me about the Serengeti though is that within the endlessness the landscape could change. The first major landmark of the Serengeti was the large kopje where Obedi had to do the paperwork for our trip, which marked a change from the grasslands. After arrival in this section we could hop from kopje to kopje which spotted the horizon. But even these we could drive past into a greener veldt. Then again later on you could find higher hills blanketed with more acacia forests. Both endless and ever-changing, it is really a wonder.

But the Serengeti did have animals, so we were not confined to landscape spotting. Prior to the safari my super amazing wife and I had both picked our dream animal to spot; mine was easy as giraffes are my favorite but her deepest hope was to spot a cheetah. And bam, almost as soon as we hit the Serengeti, Big Cats Safaris pulled through and showed us Big Cats. As we approached the rocks I had spotted feline heads which I had assumed at first would be lions, but lo! there was not one but three cheetahs, brothers by the look of them, all snoozing away happily on their rock. At the base of the rock was the remains of a gazelle, so the cheetahs were sleeping off a hearty lunch. This being a highlight of the whole trip for my super amazing wife, we lingered for a long while by the cheetahs before scooting off to give another safari vehicle a chance to admire them.

And so on we drove through the changing landscape. What also stunned me is how much the animal landscape could change as well. During this time of year the wildebeest great migration was in the area so at times we would pass these massive herds of wildebeest, usually accompanied by zebra, or else herds of gazelles or buffalo, so much that even in the endless plains it didn’t seem like there could be room for them all. But then on we would drive into a new patch of infinity where it was just us and the grass and the sky and I wondered where they all went.

Eventually though the sun began to make its way towards the horizon, rays playing across the land, and we made the definitive turn towards camp. Despite being just at the tail end of the rainy season, we didn’t get rained on at all during our safari, though towards the evening we had been chasing a rain cloud. Behind that rain the sun finally set, with astonishing reds painting the clouds. Our final stop before camp was a gas station, quite the sight in the Serengeti; the most exciting part however was watching a baboon snatch a Fanta someone had left on a curb. Truly nature is wonderful. A few more paths in the dark and we arrived at the camp.

Tink

Our cat Tink died a month ago. It was sudden, and I wasn’t here to help my wife when it happened. I had left the day before and she woke up to find Tink unwell. Where we are there isn’t much veterinary care available. Our neighbor drove my wife to what vet care there is but almost as soon as they got there Tink was gone. They buried Tink near the avocado tree I planted in the yard.

We didn’t know Tink for very long. We adopted her from Mt. Purrnon in October 2021. We have pictures of when we first met, with her curled up on top of a cat tree. She was already six when she came home with us, so we never knew her as a kitten. “We don’t have her baby photos,” is how my wife described it. We don’t know much about her life before we met her, though her paperwork said she came from a hoarding situation. She had the name Tink when we got her, and we kept it because she would come when called, though day-to-day she quickly became Tinkerbell.

Despite knowing her for so little time it was such a delight to watch her personality change as she grew more comfortable with us. Mt. Purrnon described her as a “Curious Calico” and that was always true. Any time we brought her to a new space she would want to explore. We had planned, when we brought her home, to keep her in the bathroom for a bit to let her get comfortable. But right away she wanted to head through the door and see the new space, jump on all the surfaces and discover all the nooks and crannies. Her curiosity would always overcome her fear. At the vet she would be terrified, but it was still a new place to explore, and she would be out of her carrier and climbing up to the far reaches just to see what was there. If you held her, she wanted to be up on your shoulder, to give her a better view of her domain.

She was also always so extremely kind. She would, in extremes, hiss to let her displeasure be known, but she never lashed out, never bit, never scratched. We put her through some trying times occasionally, trimming her nails or giving her a bath, but she largely just put up with it. She forgave easily, especially if she got a treat.

Tink was so small, not even six pounds. I wondered what that meant about her life before she came to us, whether she had kittens young or hadn’t eaten well in her first home. Everyone said she was small but I liked to insist that she was perfectly normal-sized, lest she ever develop body image issues. And when she first came home with us she was so quiet. She didn’t meow much or at all. You could tell when she wanted attention because she would approach you but not quite brush your leg and vibrate her butt. In the mornings she would make her presence known, walking all around our bed to try to gently encourage us to wake up. Eventually she found her voice, coming into our bedroom in the morning to loudly meow for her breakfast.

The best part of Tink getting more comfortable with us is how she eventually became a lap cat. She always liked people. When we had guests over, she wouldn’t run and hide but would make sure to be in easy reach for a scratch. At first the three of us, Tink, my wife, and I, would hang out on the couch, Tink perched on a pillow on top of the couch for maximum comfort. One time, in a special moment, my wife and I were laying on the bed, her falling asleep in my arms. Then, unexpectedly, Tink came to lay on me as well for a nap, and it felt like my whole world was right there. Tink eventually grew to like us enough where instead of being on the couch next to you, she preferred to be on your lap, and family movie nights were just perfect.

We were excited to move to this new house with her. Tink was always an inside cat. She was curious of the outside and liked looking out windows, but I remember the first time we opened the door to the balcony she was scared of the wind. We thought a house would give her so much more space to explore. And it did, though for a long while she liked to spend most of her time on our dining room table. We tried to convince her otherwise, but through and through Tink was a cat. So we forgave her sleeping on the table, and as she got bolder we forgave her drinking from our water cups and, when we weren’t fast enough to stop her, we forgave her from snatching pieces of chicken off our plates. These are the things you put up with from the ones you love.

I came home a week and a half after Tink had died. I knew it had happened but it hadn’t felt real until she wasn’t there to greet me when I returned. We had shaped our life around Tink and with her gone the hole feels so large. I go to leave the bedroom door open at night so she’ll be able to come wake us up in the morning. I go to close the kitchen door so she can’t get into the sink. Descending the stairs I expect to see her there waiting impatiently to be fed, a meow in greeting hoping for a treat. Every box we opened she would inspect, using some for weeks as a bed and others discarding right away. Now we just throw the boxes away. These are the lingering acts of memory.

We loved Tink, with all our hearts. I hope she was happy with us. We were so very happy with her.

Morocco VII: Artisan Tour Continued

As the name of the post implies, our artisan tour of Fez continues!

From our brocade artist we popped pretty much across the street to see some tile makers. We had of course been admiring mosaics all across Spain and Morocco at this point, but now it was time to see them made. Fez, as a city, does really support its artists and artisans, and these mosaic makers were housed in a nice new workshop in brightly renovated building. Except what I found funny is that they still did it the old-fashioned way despite the new-fashioned space. You see I was surprised to learn that the first part of mosaic making is to chip all the tiles into the correct shape. The mosaics are made up of all sorts of different shapes, like 8-pointed stars and 12-sided platters and ribbons and lots and lots of others. I had assumed the tiles were just molded in that shape? Like there was a little star mold and they stuck the clay in there to form it into that shape and then fired and glazed it in that shape? But no, what happens is these guys take square tiles, like you would tile your bathroom with or something, and using a hammer they chip them into the appropriate shape.

So what these guys were doing in their large, bright, airy workshop was sitting in one corner sitting on cushions and facing each other, chipping away at tiles while watching YouTube videos as piles of rubble and the raw materials of mosaics piled up around them. It was very old-fashioned and extremely impressive and I liked it a lot. It took a lot of skill to break a tile in just the right way to get just the right shape, and to do it thousands and thousands of times over and over again all day, every day. As I was standing there they carved up a little heart with my super amazing wife’s initial on it for me to give to her. Really just phenomenal skill. Later, they will assemble their many thousands of pieces into a mosaic inside of a mold and then cement them all into place for something like a table, or else for a wall mosaic it will be created in place. Artisans!

Since my super amazing wife was interested in textiles our tour could not help but go through the dyeing street. This felt like the most medieval thing we saw, in that it felt most untouched by the centuries. Like I marveled at in the last post every part of the supply chain is in this town, so those weavers weaving their beautiful cloths are getting the beautiful fibers they are weaving with here from the dyers. They still use vegetable dyes and we popped into one shop with his simmering vats of fibers undergoing the process. Then to get rid of the leftover dye they toss the water into the street where it goes down the drains down there. With the shade and the cramped space it was really a throw-back and downright magical.

But this, finally, brought us to the end of our artisan tour because it was time to go rug shopping. We knew we wanted to leave Fez with a rug so this was exciting. Our guide took us to a big ole’ rug emporium where we were treated to a whole rug-buying experience. First we got to see how some of them were made; upstairs was a woman weaving a rug, tying knots directly onto the warp to create the designs. My super amazing wife got to give it a go and the lady was very patient. Alone she operated at warp speed. But then it was time for the shopping. They sat us down in one of the alcoves lined with rugs and started unfurling rugs for us to look at. We saw Fez carpets, “magic carpets,” and our favorite were the traditional Berber carpets. There was a wool Berber carpet that I liked but was more than we were prepared to spend. Eventually they busted out a beautiful agave silk Berber rug which we settled on. Our guide declared the one we picked the most beautiful of the lot though I think we was just getting a little tired of watching us shop (he denied it). As I went off to pay for the rug the salesman tried once again to up-sell me, now that I was away from my presumably more fiscally responsible wife, and I admired the hustle. Souvenir in hand, and heads full of dazzling artistry, our guide brought us back to our hotel and our artisan tour came to an end. It was really really great and you should definitely go to Fez and check it out yourself.

BUT! The day was not over. The tour had brought us to slightly past lunch and boy were we hungry. Following the guidebook I dragged us over to Cafe Clock because their camel burger is apparently famous and I wanted to eat a burger made from a famous camel. The cafe is an amusing spot. It is wild to find; as we walked through the medina I thought we had overshot it but then found a sign pointing us down a dark alley. We went further then expected only to stumble into the restaurant. We wanted a table on the roof and got it, bursting out into the sun and admiring the view. The best part were the cats, which were everywhere. The staff kept trying to chase them away but based on the results I think it was more of a game for the sake of us tourists than anything else. A beautiful calico posted up next to us for a bit which was nice. The camel burger was pretty good though I only got to have half of one; we ordered two and the second never came and we spent two hours there. In the abstract I like the thought of a long lunch, though I started to get grumpy before the burger which I chalked up to being hungry. Once sated I was still a little grumpy, so I think my real issue is simply that I am American and don’t know how to relax. Unlike the very cute cats. Also though on American-ness the guy at the table over from us ate his burger with a fork and knife and like, man. America really is the greatest country in the world and what the hell is everyone else doing. Anyway.

Our final major destination for the day was the Nejjarine Museum of Wooden Arts & Crafts, housed in what was once the carpenters’ market. No pictures allowed except of the interior courtyard, so sorry. It took us a bit to find the place but we eventually got there. The part I liked best about the museum is they had tons of displays of all sorts of different wooden tools that we had just seen that morning still being used on our artisan tour. History and the present colliding through the power of tradition! Other cool things were decorated wooden hammers used for breaking up sugar blocks, and I learned the intricate tiered shelves I had been admiring all over the city are called “marfa.” The crown jewels of the museum had to be the stuff on the top floor, which includes a funerary stele from tomb of the saint Sidi Ali Al-Hajjam in cedarwood, and 17th century boards carved with customary laws. Super cool to see!

And then with that, finally, our day was over. We were going to go hang out by the pool in the Riad but I got us lost (again) on the way back and after taking a very circuitous route we were too pooped to do even that. A lovely dinner at the hotel though and another beautiful sunset capped off our excellent first full day in Fez.

*Interior court of the Nejjarine Museum.*

Tink! 2!

Reading this week:

The Mute’s Soliloquy by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

This post is a special request from my only and most loyal reader, my super amazing girlfriend. You all will recall the wonderful day that I put up my first post about the world’s most wonderful cat, Tink! This is a follow-up post to let you all know how she is doing!

She is doing quite well! Back when I wrote the first post we had only had Tink for like a week or two, so although our love for this perfect cat was pure, it was young. Now, with the fullness of time, we have learned so much about Tink’s personality and habits. Some things haven’t changed. For example, in the last post I waxed on about how much she loves windows. She still loves windows! Her usual habit these days is right after breakfast she hops up onto the windowsill in our bedroom (pictured below, the one above is the office) to watch the birds out there. That is the prime bird-watching location because there is a tree underneath and so there are lots of birds to watch. Having been inspired by none other than the New York Times, we occasionally put cat TV on for her, which she seems to appreciate. The advantage of cat TV is she can watch it from the couch instead of the hard windowsill. She still prefers the windowsill, and gets grumpy if we fail to open the blinds for her, but it’s nice that there are options.

Another thing we’ve done for her is get her some cat grass. She quickly got into the habit of nibbling on every plant in the house, despite the fact that nearly every plant in the house was not good for her. We told her this, but we all know how 6-year-olds can be. So we grew some cat grass and she loves to munch down on that, especially when (in her opinion) dinner is late. She is fed at 7 and 7 every day and so at about 4 in the afternoon she starts making sure to remind us that dinner is in only three hours. To satiate her rapidly diminishing form, she’ll turn to the grass.

Of course we must remember that she is correct and she needs lots of nourishment. This is because she works hard every day. Her rent is only $50 a month but between you and me she has yet to earn it. This is despite all the time she spends on the laptop typing out emails or whatever else it is that working people do. She makes up for it instead by prowling around the apartment ensuring that all is well and that we don’t have to worry about everything, demonstrating her fierce capability to protect us by chasing down toys. She finds the ones with feathers to be particularly vicious and so takes extra delight in demonstrating to us how she would take them down if they ever posed a more substantial threat.

She’s not all work however. Tink knows the value of excellent work-life balance and pursuing hobbies. Here she is napping in her bag full of sewing and knitting projects. She hasn’t made much progress on them because being a cat she doesn’t fundamentally understand clothing, but she is getting there and we make sure to encourage her by petting her and giving her scratches on her perfect little head, the sweet baby angel she is.

One place Tink has made a lot of progress is in becoming a lap cat. Tink, who I will remind you is perfect, is not the world’s most cuddly cat. She enjoys the new perspective on the world getting picked up brings, but once she has verified that all the books in the bookshelf are still in place and there is still no likely way she is going to be able to get up there, she is ready to be put down. However, she has warmed up to the notion of cuddles. You will remember from the last blog post that she liked sitting on pillows. If you make yourself particularly pillow-like, she is, on occasion, willing to climb on top of you and knead you a bit and, if you are very very lucky, settle in. A good alternative to this process we have come up with is to lay down next to her and act like it was her idea the whole time to cuddle. If you catch her in the right mood, she’s delighted to play along:

And with that is my latest update on Tink for you all. We love her very much and miss her whenever we leave the apartment, which still isn’t much frankly, so that isn’t a huge problem for us yet. Though if work ever starts making us come in we might just have to quit our jobs and go live in a cabin in the woods or something just so we can make sure to keep Tink company. She’s worth it.

Tink!

Reading this week:

Born in Blackness by Howard W. French
Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah
Children of the Forest by Kevin Duffy (this dude wants to have sex with a pygmy)

Dearest readers, I have a new light in my life, a new joy and a new obsession. As I warned in the final paragraph of my latest Cat Café post, my super amazing girlfriend and I have adopted a cat!

Tink came to us from Mt. Purrnon Cat Café, where she had been rescued from a hoarding situation. She was apparently hugely popular there, and there was quite a lot of interest to adopt her. We decided to not change her name because she knows it (and will even come when in the mood), but I do tend to refer to her as “Tinkerbell” in a very high-pitched voice because I wuv her and her fuzzy widdle tail so so much.

Tink is 6 and knows what she likes already, which is high-up places and cuddly couches. We were very excited to discover that she is so bookish, given that we have so many books (this is the guest room bookshelf). She has her spot on the couch, and also her spot on the cat tree we got her, and also a lovely cat bed that she just nestles right into, but her absolute favorite spot is on a pillow on top of the couch. She appreciates luxury like the aristocat she is.

One of her favorite activities, besides hanging out in the vicinity of us, is to hang out on windowsills, where she can observe the outside. She is an indoor cat, and seems to be a little afraid of the outdoors when the balcony door is open, but very much likes to watch all the birds from the safety of the windowsill. We got her a whole windowsill cushion so she could keep an eye out for intruders for us while my super amazing girlfriend works at her desk:

All in all she is the world’s most perfect cat, and is also absolutely the world’s smartest cat, and the cutest, and we love her a whole lot, and we would do absolutely anything for her, because of course we know she would do the same for us. I don’t actually think she likes being held like a baby much, though:

And that’s Tink!

Cat Café 5

Yes, dear readers, we are already on Cat Café 5. Last Friday, in our ongoing efforts to truly absorb the cultural sights of our new Alexandrian home, we went to the extremely cute Mount Purrnon Cat Café and Wine Bar. As you can tell from both the opening sentence of this paragraph and also of course being a long-time reader, dear reader, this is not my first experience with cat cafés and I am well placed to give you my review of this one.

My review: it was great! My super amazing girlfriend discovered Mount Purrnon by just walking around Alexandria one day and spotting the sign. It was instant love. First of course the name is a presidential pun and that is almost guaranteed to win my super amazing girlfriend’s favor. Second, their logo and (as of this writing) front page picture on their website feature a cat in a tricorn cat, which is exactly the right kind of twee to send her over the edge. And finally, the pièce de résistance, the coup de grâce for our feelings about the place, was the fact that we are very much in the market for a cat to adopt and so we have been thinking about cats a lot.

Our most recent cat café experience before this one was Crumbs & Whiskers, and while Crumbs & Whiskers is an excellent cat café that I can personally recommend, the experience here at Mount Purrnon was much different. Crumbs & Whiskers would also like you to come and fall in love with a cat and take it home, but they have aggressively optimized for the perfect instagram experience. Mount Purrnon has been open for about a year, and while they also have an excellent instagram, they haven’t gotten anywhere close to that point yet. They in fact reminded me a lot of Crumbs & Whiskers when they had only been open for about a year, so who knows what the fullness of time will bring.

Mount Purrnon is split into two levels, with the ground floor being the wine bar that is in their name. They also serve beer, cider, food, and dessert. Going to Mount Purrnon was for my super amazing girlfriend and me our big Friday night out, so we came early to get a drink before our appointed time with the cats. That was great! Then we head upstairs to meet the cats. We had the place to ourselves, because for some reason our version of a big Friday night out was not the same as everyone else’s. It was a very chill experience, with our non-feline hosts popping in only to make sure the cat’s food was topped off. So my super amazing girlfriend and I got to just hang out with all the cats and really get a taste for their personality.

One unfortunate thing for our particular visit is that the cats had, right before we ascended the stairs to the cats, been in a cat fight. This put a number of the cats on edge and also meant another number were hiding underneath one of the chairs. This is simply the nature of cats. About half the cats in the place when we visited had recently come from a hoarder situation, and the socialization aspects of cat cafés had yet to take full effect. But this is one of the points of visiting a cat café, to give the cats some practice being around a variety of friendly humans that just want to give them pets!

Nonetheless we had a great time hanging out with all the cats. There were plenty of toys and plenty of cats and plenty of time to see how each of them are. We went home talking about which of the cats were our favorite and the next morning we put in an application to adopt one! By the time you read this we will potentially be happy new cat parents, and then this blog will go from being purely a tour of every single Smithsonian to being an endless stream of cat photos!

Cat Café 4

This blog has many themes. Love, hope, family, the usual. One of these recurring themes, besides 3D printing, Renaissance Festivals, and African colonialism, is of course visiting cat cafés! This past weekend my super amazing girlfriend and I decided to visit Crumbs & Whiskers and it was a hoot!

We decided to go for several reasons. One is that we live in DC now and I had mentioned Crumbs & Whiskers somewhere between several and many times over the course of our relationship. Another is that we are in the market for a cat and we thought it might be nice to go and look at some. The most important reason is probably that it is a lot of fun. This post is titled Cat Café 4 because I have been to cat cafés four times now, once in Singapore, once in New Haven, and twice at Crumbs & Whiskers, though the last time I went to Crumbs & Whiskers was years ago now and they have since moved so it is like a whole new experience.

Well not really a whole new experience. No matter what the general gist of the thing is the same, though I gotta say over the years Crumbs & Whiskers has really refined their experience. It was good last time I went but it was clear they were getting their feet under them, but this time it was a well-oiled machine. Brought you in, sat you down, gave you the ground rules, had you take off your shoes, and carefully monitored you during your time. That sounds like a cat-based big brother, that last sentence, but no it was great. We mentioned we were in the market for a cat and they tried to find the perfect cat for us among the lot, and gently pushed us towards cats they thought would match our personality (or just carried those cats over to us). They also include a polaroid with admission and the hosts were carefully seeing when a good photo op would be. They took a very cute polaroid of the two of us petting a cat. The below picture is not that polaroid, the below picture is me looking out of my mind while surrounded by cats:

We opted for the 70 minute experience on this trip and so we got over an hour hanging out with cats. There are a lot of different things you can do with cats over 70 minutes, especially when there are like two dozen of them. I was impressed by how used the cats were to being handled, especially while they slept, and seemed little perturbed when they were picked up in a comatose state. The hosts knew each cat’s preferred toy and they were more than willing to train us up on proper cat toy usage (trickier than you think!) to get the maximum play out of each cat. I especially liked how waving a toy around could gradually garner you a larger and larger crowd of cats.

But while 70 minutes is a lot of time it is unfortunately not forever and eventually we had to leave. This was a sad moment but now I have a Crumbs & Whiskers sticker and a Crumbs & Whiskers lapel pin and many many cat photos to remember our time together by. I’m excited for Cat Café 5. Until then, here is a picture from the next day of me on the National Mall along with a DeLorean that was there, which felt kinda silly to look at because like, I’ve lived it. Not the time travel bit, but the unreliable car bit:

Cat Café 3

Reading this week:

Invisible Governance: The Art of African Micropolitics by David Hecht & Maliqalim Simone
This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

I have named this blog post “Cate Café 3” because it is the third time I have been to a cat café. Frankly I have not gone nearly enough. For those that didn’t bother to click the last link, the first time I went to a cat café was in Singapore, the second time was in Washington DC, and the third time was in our very own New Haven.

The cat café here in town is called, appropriately, Mew Haven. They run on the DC model, where they partner with a shelter and you can adopt the cats, vice the Singapore model, where the cats were exclusive to the café and were featured on all the merchandise. I follow both Crumbs & Whiskers and Mew Haven on Facebook, and frankly Crumbs & Whiskers has much better photography. This led me to incorrectly believe that Mew Haven would be an inferior cat café experience, which was probably part of the reason that it took me a year and a half to get to the place. I could not have been more wrong in my impression! Mew Haven was great!

But first the getting there. I finally booked tickets for my girlfriend and I when I guess the unbearableness of not having a cat became too much, and also it was something to do to get out of the house and also I have been feeling like I should contribute more to my community in the monetary sense and the cat café is a good cause. It’s on the other side of town, so a scooch after lunch we piled into the DeLorean and set off. We had never been to that side of town and were surprised to discover a sweet little downtown area with a dance studio and a hip-looking coffee shop and a vintage store. Very nice!

They’ve got some COVID protocols in place, and so the sessions are only 50 minutes long, making me antsy to get in. But they had to process people so it took a few minutes, but all happened smoothly. And then we were in with the cats!

It was a really good cat café session. They had something like 17 cats all crammed into there, and a large number of those were kittens who were very playful. Unfortunately they don’t let you pick up the cats, in which case I would have tried to hold all of them at once, but it’s probably for the best. I entertained myself trying to get two cute little kittens to bother an adult cat who was trying to take a nap, while my super amazing girlfriend quickly found a friendly momma cat and dedicated a good chunk of time to petting her. I also found out on this excursion that my girlfriend has a particular for large cats, and there were some excellent chonkers to keep her quite happy.

I was sad that at the end of a very short 50 minutes our time with the cats had come to an end, and we had to shuffle out of there. The Mew Haven cat café is very well run and has excellent cats and I can’t recommend them highly enough if you just want to get more cats into your life. Someday, when the lease allows, I’ll just go ahead and get an in-home cat café, but until then I’m willing to outsource to Mew Haven.

Farm Country

Reading this week:

The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

This past weekend, my super amazing and super smart and super good-looking girlfriend, who is all those things not only because she is the sole regular reader of this blog, and I had an opportunity for a socially distanced change of scenery, aka spending a few days in an unoccupied house her parents own. So we went! It was really nice being able to spend a few days in her hometown. I even sorta kinda got to meet her parents, from an appropriately social distance. Now I can put accurate imagery to all her stories of her youth.

Some of the most interesting stuff going on was happening in her own back yard. In the area several different solar farms have popped up. I’m all for solar, even if I like nuclear power more, and given the massive area of land that it will take to generate a sufficient amount of solar-powered electricity, we all need to get used to having solar panels near us and around us. But solar panels are of course contentious, unfortunately. People tend to think they change the character of the place. One of the more disappointing things about Yale is that apparently the thing keeping them from covering the whole place in solar panels is that they want to maintain the look of the place. Kinda sad that even at the liberal tree-hugging bastion that is purportedly Yale saving the planet ranks lower than aesthetics (not that a few solar panels on Yale are going to save the planet or anything).

The other interesting development is that nearby a marijuana farm is moving in. This, like solar panels, is also contentious. But soon you’ll be able to stand on the hill and look over fields of solar panels and weed, which has have been the weird wet dream of at least certain hippies back in the ’70s or something. I don’t live in the place, and I didn’t grow up in the place, but a large part of me thinks that these changes should be embraced. Solar farms and marijuana farms aren’t exactly traditional agriculture, but they are farms nonetheless, no?

Although we had to stay socially distant from people, that was very much not true of animals. And fortunately new forms of rural land use have not yet pushed out the wide variety of pastoralism in the region, so there were very many animals to pet. Reviewing my photos, my new kink appears to be pictures of my girlfriend scratching animals’ snouts:

Emmett, the friendly ram.

I like this photo because it looks like this super-cute calf is like INTO whatever she’s got on her hand.

The real bonanza for animals was the local Hancock Shaker Village. The Village is currently closed due to pandemic, but my girlfriend knows some people and was able to take me around for the tour. The place is super cool and I am excited to go back when it’s open and I can see woodworking and blacksmithing and hopefully even more animals. My favorite part was Pepper, the extremely friendly cat pictured up top, who liked to climb on people and demand scritches. These are some of the absolute best cat traits. I carried her around as we checked out the animals, which included a barn full of little babies and even more animals around the grounds. These were a small fraction of the total animals that reside at the Village when it is up and running.

Oh, to be a Very Large pig, relaxing in my pig house.

When we weren’t living the authentic life of a 19th Century Shaker, we spent most of the time in the house, relaxing. And also doing like, homework. We’re grad students, you know, and this involves a lot of homework even or maybe especially in the midst of a pandemic. But when the work got to be too much you could look out the wind and view grazing sheep.

So it was an idyllic few days up in farm country, looking at animals, snuggling on the couch, and eating delicious mac n’ cheese and even more delicious ham. We eventually left in the midst of some rain, to return to sitting in our own apartments. I’m excited to come back up when the weather is nice enough and we can watch clouds that look like sheep go by, and have sheep that look like clouds nibble our pockets.

Barn find (not really).

Kitten!

Reading this week:

Origamy by Rachel Armstrong

This post is about my sweet new cat, Inwanwa. Unfortunately, shortly after I wrote the post Cats, Munono (the eponymous cat) disappeared. I don’t know where he wound up but I hope it is someplace nice; maybe his newfound fame lead him off to Nollywood or similar climes.

Anyways, getting a cat was kind of an impulse decision. Peace Corps regs prohibits the Peace Corps Houses from having house pets. This is an allergy and health regulation, but at our house in Kasama stray cats manage to eke out a living on the grounds despite us reading the aforementioned Peace Corps regulations to them. Cats! At any rate, presumably due to the proclivities of these cats, the house got a kitten infestation.

The story of me and Inwanwa is probably something along the lines of the cutest Rom-Com ever, because the first time he saw me he hissed at me and refused to come near me. By the next time I had come to the house, however, someone had fed the kittens and so suddenly they were all about people. This sounds cute, because it was, but the cats had to go. No longer afraid of people, they would aggressively go after your food on the porch and sneak into the kitchen in the house and wreck havoc (but cute havoc) as kittens are wont to do. So they had to go.

My poor cat here, no one wanted him. I didn’t really want him either, because owning a cat is like, responsibility, but Munono was missing and I have a big ole soft spot for the unloved. So my fellow PCVs, sensing weakness, pressed me to adopt him and so I did. The morning when I left he was unceremoniously put into a cardboard box lined with panty liners and I carted him home. This must have been traumatic for the poor thing because carting him home involved waiting an hour for a minibus, a three hour minibus ride, and then being strapped to the back of my bike and biked home. The poor thing survived in good condition and was welcomed home with some ham.

I was worried he would hate me after that little ride but apparently not. So now I own a cat. I had decided to name him after his distinctive mustache, so he was dubbed “Inwanwa,” which is apparently Mambwe for “mustache.” I asked my host dad and he didn’t think there was a Mambwe word for “mustache” (not a popular hair style) but the dictionary says it is Inwanwa so there we go.

Since getting the cat my hobbies have largely been making cat toys (he prefers toilet paper rolls) and pounding rebar into my walls and damaging the brickwork to make him platforms he doesn’t use. But he is cute and he likes to take naps on my lap and also claw me a lot. He has taken to stalking chickens and so my biggest fear is that he becomes a chicken killer, which would be expensive for me. He doesn’t eat kapenta which means I have to feed him cat food and when he can’t get me to play by clawing at me he bats at the dogs’ tails, which is playing with fire little cat. They mostly ignore him. So yeah, standard issue cat.

Pat in the World

Paperwork enthusiast seeking new frontiers of paperwork. Former submariner, former Peace Corps Volunteer. Opinions, thoughts, and comments reflect no actual persons, living or in the Navy.

Category: Cats

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Kitten!