A New Kitten...

I’m sure no one will be surprised to know that I have found a sickly kitten who has made her way home with me. Last Thursday Kelly and I went to work as usual and as we walked in we noticed this large safari like SUV with a ton of large duffle bags sitting beside it. I figured that some people had probably camped in the ruins the night before and that probably the group was traveling all over the continent of Africa or at least all over Kenya. Kelly and I hadn’t seen the people yet, but we were very curious to know who the people were and what they were doing. Finally we see these older people loading things into the SUV. I would say that this group of people were in their mid to late 50’s. This peaked Kelly’s and my interest even more because we were expecting the people to be in their late 20’s to early 30’s. We eventually made our way over to them and asked them if they’d spent the night in the ruins, which they had. We began talking to them and discovered that they all were Canadian and that almost all of them were some type of field biologist. There was bird person, a mammal person, and several others. Kelly and I were fascinated with them and their story. They had been in Kenya for a month already and were traveling all over the country in their SUV. Anyway to make a long story short one of the women in the group finally says that there is a kitten in the bathrooms and that she looks very unhealthy. She wanted to know if we would go and look at it. So we talk some more with the people and then finally make our way over to the bathrooms to look for the kitten before heading out to find the monkeys. On our way over I hear the kitten meowing at the top of its lungs, so I begin running, thinking it was in danger. All of a sudden I see this tiny tiny black kitten at my feet completely terrified. I hesitated for a minute, not wanting to touch her as I wasn’t sure if she had mange or some other disease that I did not want to get. Finally I made the decision that she needed help and that she was probably too young to have any serious diseases yet, so I bend down to pick her up.
I had her in my hands for less than a minute when I suddenly realized that she was covered in safari ant heads. She had 50 to 100 safari ants stuck in her paws, all over her stomach, in her tail, whiskers and head. Safari ants are these vicious ants that eat small animals alive. They travel in groups of millions, when you see them on a path they have usually dug a trench with thousands of solider safari ants on either side of the trench guarding the females and their eggs that are passing through the trench, ready to attack anything that gets close to them. This poor kitten must have accidentally wandered into the trench and was too weak or paralyzed from fear to get out of the trench right away and so the ants had time to climb all over her. The soldiers just crawl on you at first until you make a move that scars them and then one bites. As soon as one bites then all the others bite and their heads stick in you. You have to pull each head and body out of your skin to stop the horrific pain. Two days before we had seen a dead kitten covered in safari ants; all you could see was white fur and its skeleton underneath a million or more ants. Most likely this poor kitten also traveled into the trench, but couldn’t get out and was eaten alive. I couldn’t let the same happen to this kitten, so Kelly and I sat down to pull out all the ant heads. The kitten had already chewed off all the bodies. I have no idea how long the heads had been in her, at least a day or two. It took us an hour to remove every head.
Once they were all removed I gave her a bath in the bathroom sink to try and disinfect some of the bites and to get her clean, she was absolutely filthy. As I was giving her a bath I noticed that she had flees. At this point I made the decision that she had to go to the vet and that she was coming home with me because I couldn’t live with myself if I just released her back to the forest. There is no way she was going to survive, and she obviously came to where there are people to get help, the feral cats that live in the forest never get close to people. While I finished washing her Kelly called the director of our field house to get the number for a vet, whom we called and made an appointment for an hour later. We had to go all the way into Malindi to see the vet. When we got there he looked at her for about 30 seconds and said she looks good. I explained to him that she had flees, and his response to this was “yea, animals here have flees.” I explained to him that I knew this but that I was taking her home to a place where there were 2 dogs who did not have flees so I couldn’t bring the flees home to them. He continued to resist giving her medication even though I was looking at a wall full of Frontline, flee repellent. I asked if he could give her a flee bath and he said that she was too small, that giving her a bath would make her too cold and possibly giver her the flu. I explained that I had already given her a bath that day and that she dried right away in the heat, asking again for him to give her a flee bath. He finally says he has some flee shampoo he can give me. At this point I beg him to give her the bath, as she has flees on her head and I don’t feel comfortable washing her with such harsh chemicals. He finally agreed to giver her a flee bath and basically said that she had a skin infection that came from her mother’s milk not having enough nutrition, but that it would clear up in a few days and that her rectum had been distended, but that it retracted back inside her and was still slightly distended, but that that too would be fine in a few days.
It is now 5 days later and she is currently living at the field house with us. She has put on some weight, though I would like her to put on a lot more. She was just skin and bones when we found her. Her skin rash has not gotten better and almost looks worse to me, but her rectum has retracted back completely and looks good. She has a lot more energy now and is running and playing which is a very good sign. However, her fecals are as black as she is, and from my experience, black feces are not a good sign and often indicate worms or parasites. The vet had given her a deworming medicine while we were there, so I’m not sure what’s wrong with her, if anything is at all. I am going to call the vet tomorrow and see if I need to bring her back in to get looked at.
I’m sure everyone is wondering what I am going to do with her. The plan was to bring her back for a week and have me look after her, but then a couple that people at the field house know is moving up country and are looking for a kitten, so the directors of the field house were hoping that they would take her. Now I was not thrilled with this idea as I have put a lot of time and money into caring for her and I have become attached and naturally want to keep her myself. My original plan was to keep her for the year I am here and then to get all the necessary paperwork and bring her back to the states when I return. This is still what I would like to do, however there is one minor problem. The directors of the field house will not allow her to stay once she is large enough to hunt birds. The great majority of the work that they do is bird conservation work and apparently domestic cats are responsible for killing millions of birds each year, so they feel having a cat live here would go against their work and what the organization stands for. I understand this but desperately want to keep her as well. As the practical side of me says it would be easier and maybe better for her to stay living with someone here in Kenya, so I am very torn on what to do. Most likely if I move out of the field house I can keep her and my original plan even before I came here was always to move out in order to save money. However, there are major advantages and disadvantages to staying in the field house and to moving out so I am also torn on that decision. I guess only time will tell what will happen, but I thought everyone might get a kick out of this story. I will post pictures of her soon, as well as of the place I am living and some of the monkeys. I have named the kitten Maisha, which means life in Swahili, since she rescued herself in away by finding humans to help her and fought the safari ants for her life. It may still be an uphill battle, but I am confident she will survive.
To come soon is a post on my trip to Mombassa and other fun and weird things that have happened since I arrived. Hope everyone is doing well. I miss you all!!!!