Gratuitous Cat Photos

I’ve become a cat person, but not by choice.  I never understood the persnicketiness of cats; they seem to barely tolerate humans and delight in the rejection of affection; their prolific use of sharp claws to indicate both enjoyment and annoyance with whomever is engaging them is confounding.  I just cannot deal with cats.

 

However, when a person witnesses the level of mistreatment of animals that occurs in rural parts of Peru, one cannot help but to develop an obligation to protect them from the conditions they face.  And after I rescued two kittens from certain death, I couldn’t stop myself from falling in love with them.

 

The family calls all three cats “Pichaling.”  There is a mom cat and two kittens, a boy and a girl, that were born in January 2013, only a few months after I arrived.  The mom cat had three kittens; one died right away.  The other two survived, and after a few months they were a couple of cute furballs running around the house behind their mommy and peeing and pooping everywhere.

 

The mom cat has a nasty temperament and avoids all contact with humans.  The two little kitties were terrified of people and would scurry away anytime anyone got close.  So, it was particularly strange when the smaller one sat himself down in front of me one day and started pathetically mewing at me.  It seemed like such an odd thing to do after avoiding me like the plague up until this point.

 

It was the first time I had been so close to the kitten, and I noticed that he was terribly skinny and shaking, with glassy, sunken eyes.  It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t seen the mom cat around the house for a few days, or possibly longer.  Honestly, I couldn’t remember the last time I saw her.  Apparently, the kittens have not been getting milk from the mom, and given that the family doesn’t feed the cats…it hit me like a thunderbolt: these kittens are starving to death – literally right in front of me!

 

The tiny kitty was so desperate for food that he set aside his mortal fear of humans to beg me to save his life…and, of course, I did.  There is no cat food in my house and there’s nowhere to buy it in my town, so I cracked open some raw eggs and the two kitties lapped them up like they were caviar. 

 

I was relieved to see them enjoying the eggs and I have continued to feed them eggs (which they love!) along with canned anchovies.  Eventually, they started gaining weight and looking healthier.  The smaller one was so scrawny, and although while he became healthier and started growing, he still hasn’t caught up to his sister.

 

I feel like a proud mom who rescued two adorable kids who are now precocious teenagers; the boy is always stirring up trouble and the girl is now a pregnant teen.  (Oops, I guess I forgot to give her the sex ed talk).

Enjoy the photos!

 

 

 

Brother and sister cuddling together.
You can see how he is dwarfed by her size.

She used to sit behind my laptop and reach around to
swat her paws in front of the screen while playing with me. 
Here she is grabbing at my camera strap.

His favorite place to nap is underneath my mosquito net.
And when he's feeling frisky he tries to climb it!



Adorable sleeping kitty



The only photo I have with his eyes open.
He doesn't look as mean.

I think she's stalking me.

MUCHO EXITO

My definition of success has been drastically altered since coming to Peru.  As can be expected, things just work differently down here.  An event is still considered successful if only half of the participants show up and they arrive an hour late.  But they are more likely to show up if refreshments are being served -- not because people are starving; they just really appreciate tasty snacks.

Very recently I launched my first two events, one to benefit mothers with children under 3 years and the other to benefit the adolescents in my community.  I was really hoping that both events would be successful, if only to prove to myself that I am actually contributing something to my community.

 

The event to benefit mothers with small kids was a workshop that the mothers who are enrolled in our Healthy Homes program are obligated to attend.  The topic of the workshop was how to prevent diarrhea illnesses, because, as you can imagine, there is a LOT of that here.  And it is dangerous for children to have repeated bouts of diarrhea, as it can impede the proper growth and development of a child’s brain and body when essential nutrients are lost during the illness.

 

I enjoy talking about poop.  Or rather, I get a kick out of talking about a subject that is gross, and I’m aware that people will be more likely to remember my presentation if I cross into that gray area that makes people uncomfortable but not totally disgusted.  So, I included images of bacteria, virus, and worm-like parasites that live in your guts and cause diarrhea.  These critters come from poop, and the most common way to get them into your body is by eating contaminated food or drinking contaminated water.  (More than half of these illnesses can be prevented just by washing your hands.  Oh, it seems so simple, doesn’t it?)

 

I wanted the mothers to really comprehend that when their child has diarrhea, it’s the result of feeding poop to their kid.  And when they get diarrhea, it’s (most likely) because they ate poop.  I’m hoping the gross-out factor helps people remember to wash their hands.

 

To organize the workshop, I coordinated with two community health promoters who were co-presenters, along with the staff at the health clinic.  We drafted a session plan that detailed exactly what we need and on what topic each person would be presenting.  I wrote an official request and submitted the document to the Municipality to provide material support we needed for the activities and demonstrations during the event. 

Almost every day during the weeks prior to the event, I was meeting with the staff at the health post or meeting with the health promoters to discuss our plans, or checking with the authorities at the Municipality on the whereabouts of the materials, or working on my presentation.   You may be surprised to find out that the most pressing question on everyone’s mind was “What kind of snacks will you be serving?”  (Not “What information will you be presenting?” or “What are your learning objectives?”)

 

I became concerned about a week before the event when my deadline for receiving the materials had passed.  I became more insistent about needing the materials and I talked to anyone at the Municipality who would listen to me.  Finally, the day before the event, the mayor told me that I could have half of the items I requested.  (So, only half of the families will receive materials?  It’s not ideal, but we can work with it).  I rushed over to the supply office to talk with the manager, but he was already gone for the day and it wasn’t likely that he would be able to acquire materials the next morning.

 

I had already started accumulating a few things that we could use during the event just in case the Municipality dropped the ball entirely.  I was determined not to overhaul the session plan and cancel activities or demonstrations just because we were missing a few materials.  After I got the news from the mayor, I made a list of every essential teaching tool that we were missing and I hopped on my bike to ride to the market in another town 30 minutes away.

 

After scrambling to pull it all together, we had a decent turnout (21 of the 33 mothers attended) and people participated in the discussions and group activities, such as hand washing, preparing oral rehydration solution, and the Diarrhea Cheer:

¡Pasame la “E”!

¡Pasame la “D”!

¡Pasame la “A”!  

¿Que dice?  ¡“EDA”! 

¿Que significa? “Enfermadades Diarreicas Agudas”

 

And I’ll bet you are wondering how tasty were the snacks?  Well, the mothers seemed to really enjoy the home-baked banana bread I baked and the sugar-free Tang.

 

Mothers showing off new Tipi Taps

Mothers participating in hand washing activity

 

The other event I launched last week was a Movie Night for the teens in my community.  The genesis of this event was inspired by three youth in my pueblo motivated to get involved in community events, and so we formed an official Youth Committee.  I have been impressed with these three young women to take the initiative, come up with great ideas and motivate others to participate.

 

Their plan is to raise enough money at the Movie Nights (by charging a very small entrance fee) to hire a professional dance coach to choreograph a dance and teach it to the girls to present during our town’s anniversary celebration in the first week of October.  Great plan, right?

The only hitch was that in order to pull off the Movie Night I need official Authorization from the Municipality to use the event space, security guards, sound equipment, projector and chairs.  I submitted the official documents and (to my surprise) the request was accepted!

 

The girls on the Youth Committee wanted to promote attendance by offering a free snack with the price of admission (don’t forget the all-important snack!), and so they coordinated the preparation of little bags of popcorn. I took care of the logistics.  Given that an event like this had not been done before in my community, there were a LOT of questions, judgment calls, and hectic last-minute changes.

 

For example, even though I had received official Authorization from the Municipality to utilize the security guards, sound equipment, projector and chairs, and I still had to coordinate with each person responsible for each item and then confirm that they would actually show up.  For example, as is customary (and expected), I bugged the person responsible for bringing 50 chairs to the event space numerous times throughout the day and (finally!) they arrived 30 minutes after the scheduled start time of the event.  Which actually was not a problem because the movie-goers didn’t begin arriving until one hour after the start time.  (It’s a common practice called the “Hora Peruana”).  However, we were provided only 28 chairs -- not the 50 promised to us -- which left us with no choice but to ask neighbors and attendees to bring chairs.

 

Despite the last-minute scrambling, nervousness and teen angst, we managed to bring in over 50 people (although many arrived in the middle of the movie, two hours late) and we doubled the money we were expecting to earn from this one event.   Our second Movie Night occurred last night, which was much better coordinated (thanks to my handy task list :-) and it was also wildly successful.  We’ve got two down and two more events to go…wish me and the Youth Committee good luck!

 

P.S. for the non-Spanish readers: the word “exito” in Spanish means “success” not “exit.”  I’m not trying to imply that when I host events people go rushing for the exit-o. J