“This cat situation is getting a little out of control”
This quote is from one of my stagemates, because recently every PCV seems to be getting a cat (or cats). At least half of the PCVs in the North West region have had cats during their service. I know this because most conversations between PCVs seem to revolve around one of three things: Peace Corps staff, other PCVs/RPCVs in or from Cameroon, and my favorite, PCV cats. For many of us it’s our first time living alone, and who doesn’t want a furry little friend to greet you when you come home? But it does seem to irritate the few without cats, because the rest of us who have cats want to spend all our time talking about our cats. So disclaimer: if you don’t want to hear about my Peace Corps cats, just stop reading now.
Last April, I adopted the kitten of my friend’s neighbor’s cat. The process of getting the kitten into a box for me to take him home in was incredibly chaotic, and left me and my friend’s Cameroonian neighbor covered in scratches. When I got the kitten home, he basically hid for an entire week. One of his favorite hiding spaces was behind my bed, and finally he would let me pet him a little without trying to scratch me. By the end of the week, all he wanted to do was snuggle with me. I decided to name him Nova (I’ll admit, at first I did think ‘he’ was actually a ‘she’), because he looked a lot like my cat at home, Starlight, so I decided to continue the star theme. We had a great relationship for nearly a year, until, while I was in the process of moving houses and he was moving between a number PCVs’ houses, he got outside and never came back.
Whenever I got bored, Nova and I would do photo shoots.
Nova actually hated being held, so he wasn’t too happy at this point in time
I was pretty upset when Nova first ran away, but I like to think that since he was so terrified of basically all people except me, he hasn’t been captured and eaten, but instead is living a fabulous jungle life. A month or so after Nova got lost, I heard that one of my stagemate’s cat had a kitten. I called her up and asked if when the kitten was old enough, if I could adopt it. She said yes, and this week I picked up the little guy. We haven’t bonded too much yet, he doesn’t seem to really want to snuggle with me, but at least he isn’t terrified of me. He basically follows me into any room I go to and loves to play, so I’m guessing it’ll only take a few days for me and little Ernesto to become best friends.
Isn’t he just the cutest?
Already working on our best friendship
P.S. Major points to anyone who can guess who I named him after!