emily christine doerr: KITTEN!!!

My little sister complained to me that my blog had too many words on it. At nineteen maybe she’s feeling a little overloaded with words, I don’t know, but for her sake and for the sakes of the rest of the teenagers of this world, I’ll try to keep it short.

I got a new kitten. One of our APCD’s cats had 7 kittens and against my better judgment I decided to acquiesce to adopting one of them. I was going to go get them in Bamako, but a Peace Corps car showed up yesterday and two adorable kittens were in the map box in the door. Another volunteer adopted a kitten too. I don’t know how to describe the LACK of cute in Mali, but it’s a rarity. Yes, there are lots of babies, but when they shit on you, the immediately fall into the category of leave me the hell alone, so when something comes along that is cute and stays cute, we really have a hard time handling it. There’s usually a lot of giggling and then lots of photos are taken, sometimes we even celebrate the cuteness with beers. This was so beyond cute, I almost cried, I mean the kittens were falling asleep standing up! I keep thinking how easy kittens are to take care of, I think it took 24 hours to potty train her and teach her where to find food and water. Now I can leave the house and not think about her until I get back. Babies are not like this. Babies are stupid, and like I said before, they have a tendency to shit on you. There have been moments here where my maternal instincts try to come out and I make those horrible cooing noises and ask to hold the baby, having this kitten has effectively squashed all my desires to have kids, at least in the near future. I mean, you can’t pet a baby, and babies don’t play with yarn, or chase bugs, or accidentally go on an acid trip after biting a Malian frog. (Factoid for the day: the frogs in Mali have chemicals on their skin that act as a defense mechanism, it’s pretty effective too. After biting the frog, the kitten foamed at the mouth then stumbled around for a while in a daze. Now she’s sleeping it off. Rough day for a kitten, but I think she learned her lesson.)

One of the hardest and most excruciating moments about dealing with new pets is finding a name. I hate cheesy names, sorry folks, but I’m not down with anything that ends with a ‘y’, is named after a band, or is remotely cute. (I know what you’re thinking, she’s complaining about the lack of cuteness in Mali and then she actively prevents cute from appearing. I am not preventing cuteness, I’m preventing cats from losing their self-respect.) Kittens are cute enough, but they grow up and when you give them a name like Fluffy, you start to not take it seriously and God knows we’ve got to take the cat seriously. My other cat, who is evil and hates the world, was named after the amount of money she cost. Could you imagine if someone did this to a human? You’re name would be “I have no health insurance so you were expensive” or “hospital bills, baby clothes and diapers.” Anyway, Keme Saba is the evil cats name, that means 1500 CFA in Bambara and she certainly wasn’t worth the 3 dollars I paid for her. Nevertheless, it is a unique name and never ceases to get a laugh and she has a source of pride. She can lord it over the stray cats that someone wanted her enough that they PAID for her! Now, this is key, you want the name to be clever so that you appear witty and worldly. But not so forced that you’re trying to appear witty and worldly. You also want to prevent EVERYONE from understanding immediately what the name could mean because you want a few people to have to ask what the significance of it is. You can also go the route where you give the animal a name that invokes no laughter or questions because it is just perfect for the animal. You have to give the kitten a name it can grow into, this goes back to that cute shit, no cute names, not ever, you grow OUT of a cute names not into it. We all know that cats can be bitter, evil animals if they choose so you need to respect it and give it name it can proudly tell its cat friends.

That said we named the kitten Phyllis. She happens to be named after my favorite character from The Office, and she has wholeheartedly lived up to her name. The problem now is that Malians can’t really say Phyllis or have never heard of it, so she also was given a Malian name, which ended up being Michelle, which is not a Malian name, it’s French. (excuse the lack of logic) I did not give her the name; my guard did after he scoffed at the name Phyllis, so he named the cat after another volunteer who I think he secretly loves. This volunteer no longer lives in Mali, however, so she’ll live on as the second name of a kitten named Phyllis who lives in Kayes.

Abigail, I’m certain you didn’t make it this far, so for those of you who did, congratulations and don’t forget to tell me Mozel Tov for my new kitty Phyllis. Please see photos…