Diva

The first time I met Diva, she was demonstrating the patience of a saint while entertaining my toddler neighbors.  The scrawny little cat was hunkered down next to our bamboo fence when I rescued her from Suel and Rodasa who thought that petting a cat included hitting it with a spoon.

            That was about a week after I had moved to Montepuez so Mireya had not yet returned from her trip to the states and my house still felt too empty.  When the cat showed up again looking for a little food and affection, I was more that happy to oblige.  She would climb into my lap when I sat on the porch or sprawl out in the sun in front of my house for a few hours before disappearing again for a few days.  The friendlier I became with her and the more food I offered, the more frequently she started appearing.  Eventually she worked up the courage to follow me into the house but she would scamper from the door to hide under the kitchen counter afraid I might kick her out.   

Behind the trashcan?  Really?  Could you try to be more pathetic-looking?

           After a week or two of my allowing her to take naps in various hiding places in the house, she decided that this wasn’t a half-bad place to be and that I wasn’t going to throw her outside if caught her in the house.  She started coming nearly every day to spend the whole day, sleeping on my bed, sitting on my lap while I read, and sharing my meals.  When Mireya came back, the little cat took pretty well to her, too.  We would watch movies on her bed with the laptop and a purring cat between us. 

You are not a lion and this is not your habitat - inside joke for the family ;)

            We still didn’t think of her as “our” cat until another teacher came to visit and saw her sleeping on our porch.  He knew the people the cat really belonged to and said that if we wanted her, we just needed to talk to them because he always saw them throwing her out of the house; they didn’t want her.  Up until this point, we had just been refering to her as “the neighbor’s cat,” not even knowing which neighbor she belonged to.  With this news, we decided we could claim her as our own could finally give her a name.

            Only one name seemed appropriate considering how quickly this African stray had adjusted to the pampered life of a house cat: Diva.

Mireya and Diva.   She definitely earned her name.

She even got her own dressing room.

            At this point, we were Diva’s main residence.  Mireya and I were eventually suckered into letting her sleep in the house at night after she came home one morning with a torn ear to constantly remind us of how narrowly she had escaped a fight.  Diva had no problem with that.  She loved to snuggle.  However, 4:30 am would roll around and Diva would start getting restless to be let out and do her business.  Not the most convenient time, but it’s still more convenient than cleaning up presents.

            While she turned out to be easily housebroken, she still left us presents to clean up.  Bugs were usually not worth her time but she LOVED chasing the geckos that live in our house.  The only problem was she chase them, catch them, and play with them until they got so scared they lost their tails (a gross self-defense mechanism for geckos).  Diva would then leave the dead gecko and it’s still wriggling tail for me to sweep up…  Either way, cats are great for pest control.  This includes toddlers.  Suel was afraid of Diva so whenever she wandered into the house at a bad time, we would chase her out of the house with the cat in hand.

This how much Diva cares about the imminent termite invasion.  Yes, I came home from a weekend away from site to find termite mounds growing out of a crack in my floor...

            Diva wasn’t just a star in our house, she also started attending our REDES (women’s group) meetings.  She loved to hang out in our alpendra while we sewed bags with our girls.  We joked about Diva being the REDES mascot and the girls loved her.

It is unfortunate that I waited until now to talk about the cat that we had.

Had.

            About a week ago, Diva started acting lethargic.  She was quiet so we immediately knew something must be wrong because she usually never shut up.  She deteriorated over the course of the week despite our efforts to keep her fed and hydrated.  While she still had the strength, she would get out of the baby bath lined with towels that served as her bed to go outside and do her business but she started getting weaker and then started walking in circles.  We knew then that it was probably over but we tried to keep her comfortable.

            Mireya and I were both home when she died and we were able to bury her under a bamboo cross in our yard.  Our neighbors thought we were crazy for crying over a stray cat but most of them respected our little “funeral” anyways. 

We may not have had her for long, but at least she finally found a family that loved her.