Deep Thoughts by Lucky the Kitten

Hi everyone!

Yes, we are still alive. Sorry we haven't posted, but life has been completely insane this past week and it's been difficult to get our thoughts together long enough to write anything, much less post pictures. We are bad bloggers and apologize! In fact, this post has no pictures because we have a morning visit tomorrow and it's 11pm here; I need to hit the hay!

Anyways, we've had a week very full with fun visits and not so fun other stuff. The boy is doing great; we just this week figured out (with the help of Makabat) how to get him to laugh a hearty guffaw. It's so cute, and we promise to post video of it very soon. He is getting SO close to walking! He's starting to stand without support more now, and every once in a while he takes a step on his own (shortly followed by a tumble!). The weather can't decide what it's doing here so our visits have been both inside and out, and we're stuffing the baby with cookies as usual.

The "not so fun" stuff has to do with the title of this post, Lucky the kitten. When we arrived here we saw litters of kittens and puppies all over the place, and we stayed away. We knew (enough) how hopeless it would be to get involved with any critters here, and it was easy to stay away. Besides, all the animals we saw were healthy enough, and the weather was warm. Well, several days ago at around 11pm we heard full-blown yowling in our corridor. It went on and on and we finally went out to investigate. It was during a freak cold spell we were having and it was in the 40's that night. Lo and behold, a teeny tiny black kitten was all alone yowling in the corridor. He looked about 4-5 weeks old, and when we caught him we realized that he was very sick and bony. Being the suckers that we are, we took him in and started fattening him up. As it turns out, it's even harder than we thought it would be to find homes for unwanted kittens in Kaz. Before meeting Lucky, we were already beginning to descend into our first real waves of culture shock. The point was brought home when we were told that the most common way to deal with unwanted animals in this country is to drown them. Sigh. There was just no getting around that we were very far from home, indeed.

Long story short, it's been a very rough week. The little whiny monster is still here (and still cute, and a little fatter, though we did think he might die one night). We are doing everything we can to find a cat loving person to bribe to take him. It is time for him to GO. We are here to adopt a baby, not save kittens! Still, if we were faced with the same situation again, I find it unlikely that we would have kept the door shut. Seeing a kitten out in the sun stuffed fat with mice is a bit different from a kitten in 40 degree rainy weather that is so skinny he can barely swallow.

So, until the crazy cat lady with 25 cats comes to claim him, we're stuck with him. Hey, at least he uses the box!

Otherwise, everything is going well. It just gets hard to be so far from home for so long. I would give my left arm for a big tub of sour cream right now. We went to the Douglass' tonight for spaghetti, and it was an awesome regression into american life! That, and we found a store that sells french wine, whoohoo! While a $12 bottle of french wine here might rival two buck chuck in the states, it's still heaven compared to what we had before.

This weekend, I PROMISE, I will post pictures!

Jen