Malindi/Paka

So my trip to Malindi was a series of small disasters- things really did not go my way.  Frustrated, I was sitting in the hotel lobby pleading with the manager about leaving that day and not paying for the room that I hadn’t used.  I was hot and tired, so while waiting for the owner I ran up to the nearby shop to get a Coke.  While I was there, a man came out holding a kitten.  He had his hand wrapped in a plastic bag so he didn’t touch it.  It was obviously sick, with eyes sealed from conjunctivitis, but it was meowing in protest loudly.  While walking away from the shop, I heard it again.  It was sitting in the corner of a building, crying loudly.  I knew that it was being abandoned to die.  So I took it. 
Oops. 
So I went back to the hotel, asked the manager for a box, and where the nearest vet was.  He called a tuk-tuk for me, and the little paka (cat in Kiswahili) and I took a trip out to the super posh suburbs of Malindi.  Malindi definitely has the greatest concentration of ex-pats that I’ve seen in Kenya so far.  It makes sense- the area is beautiful, apparently the sailing is great (according to the ridiculous British ex-pats I overheard) and you can go deep sea fishing.  So at the vet I sat across from a German ex-pat while waiting for the vet to return from going to get medication.  When he got back, the vet cleared out the paka’s eyes, gave me two medications, told me she was about 6wks old, and charged me 400 shillings (about $5) for all of it.  He suggested that I get Cerelac (a nutritional supplement for babies) and milk to feed her and REFUSED, flat out, to take her from me.  Upon returning to the hotel, the manager was super nice and let me keep her in the room, provided that I “don’t leave it here with us when you go.”
So I went out to get dinner.  I trapped her in her box pretty well, I thought.  She was pretty feral at that point- hissing every time I tried to pet her and running away from me in the room.  When I got back, I couldn’t find her anywhere.  The manager said that he had heard her crying, and I had heard her as I had come up the stairs, but the meows stopped as I came in the room.  I searched the entire room for her, but couldn’t find her.  It was dark, but I noticed one of the louvered windows (common here) was open just a crack.  I decided to look out on the balcony.  I leaned over and saw a small concrete awning below my balcony and thought I saw an odd shape.  I ran back in to get my flashlight.  It was the paka, she had jumped out of the window and down about ten feet to the ledge.  I was so mad.  I couldn’t leave her there; she would starve to death or jump and die.  My only option was to climb over the balcony, drop onto the awning, throw her onto the balcony and pull myself back up.  So that’s what I did. 
After all that, all I wanted to do was go to sleep.  The day hadn’t worked out well, and now I had an extra shida (problem) that I had to take care of.  Paka had other plans though.  She is still pretty young, too young to be away from her mother, really, so she spent the entire night searching and crying for her mom around the room.  The room was also locked up tight- all the windows closed- so there was almost no airflow.  When she started quieting down a little (around 3:30am) the mosque began its hourly calls for Morning Prayer.  I finally got to sleep around 5am for one hour. 
When I finished repacking (including the paka’s bowl, food, and kanga) and eating breakfast, I set out to catch a matatu.  I finally got one, and spent the next hour with a seriously upset kitten.  It was hot, people were shouting at me to change matatus (a ploy to try and confuse the mzungu), and the road isn’t the smoothest.  She finally calmed down for the second hour and a half, but would only sleep when the matatu was moving.  I finally got her back to my apartment though.
She’s been here for about three days and has completely taken over.  She’s a total princess and no longer feral at all.  She doesn’t have a real name- MB and I call her Paka and Shida mostly and occasionally Majini (spirit in Swahili- people here in Mombasa believe that cats are spirits or devils).  She lives in a large closet, which is covered with her newspaper toys, and is spoon and hand fed her Cerelac.  She has her own bowl of whole milk in the fridge and every time she cries she knows one of us will check on her.  I went to the KSPCA to see about what to do when I leave- it was surprisingly well run and all of the animals looked super happy.  I was told to hold onto her for a little longer, to build her up, because her chances of living were slim without some fat on her and a little higher age.  Esther, the woman that I’m working with, has offered to take her when I leave, but she barely has enough money to feed her children, so I’m leery of giving her an extra shida. 
Anyway- here’s the princess!  She’s soft and fluffy since she got a bath and had a large portion of her fleas removed.  She was not a happy camper while she was all wet, but now she seems much happier with fewer fleas.  Also- there isn’t really a perspective in these shots, but she’s only a little bigger than my hand.  Super cute.  She likes to fall asleep on our laps at night, play with her newspaper toys, and have her belly and behind her ears scratched.