There is a new addition to our house in Musanze…a kitten. A few weeks ago, Emma and I were in Kigali to run a few errands and to get a change of scenery. Around 10pm the first night we were there, Emma came in the room we had reserved and announced that she was going to rescue a cat. When she was walking down the hill to the hostel, she heard one meowing in tortured lament in a nearby tree. I was eager to help, so we grabbed a towel and our phones (they have flashlights in them) and set off on a mission. Unfortunately, all attempts to scale the tree failed, due partially to the fact that it was a bad tree for climbing, partially to the fact that it was growing out of a particularly steep part of the hill, and partially to the fact that we are not cats. With each try, the cat grew more terrified at the shaking of the tree and inched itself up another foot or so.
We soon decided to abandon Plan A (climb the tree) and move to Plan B (locate a ladder). As it was now 10:30pm, we knew we would not be able to find any handymen around the hostel or nearby church, so we went to the bar that was right next door. After a minute or two of a mixture of Kinyarwanda, French, and English (turashaka, save the ipusi de l’arbre) we managed to discover that the bar did not possess a ladder, that they had also heard the loud calls for help from the cat, and that Rwandan cats liked trees, so we should just leave it there. Hoping someone would have some other ideas for us, we humored everyone by greeting several groups of barflies, satisfying their curiosity about who we were and why we were in Rwanda, and explaining our cat problem. We got the same response: leave the cat in the tree.
Undeterred, we attacked Plan C … stand under the tree and coo at the cat. This plan turned out to be effective. No, the cat did not climb down, but a few passersby heard the cooing and stopped to see what was going on. One young woman started meowing back at the cat. Not helpful. But after surveying the situation, one man grabbed the tree and started shaking it as hard as he could. This was not a tactic that Emma and I had wanted to use as it was horribly distressing to the kitty. It started climbing higher and higher up the tree which was becoming thinner and thinner towards the top. Finally, the challenge of climbing a shaking tree overcame it, and the cat dropped right into the outstretched towel that Emma was holding.
We wrapped it up in the towel, took it to the nearby 24-hour shopping center and bought it a covered basket and some tuna. We took it back to the room with us and spent the next several hours in and out of sleep while the cat loudly lamented its pathetic life. Somewhere around 4am Emma decided that the cat had to go, so she took the basket outside, turned it on its side and scooted the cat out. But the cat had already decided that the towel was better than trees and drainpipes and ran right back into the basket, casting a pitiful look at her. What can you do? Nothing but take the darn cat back inside, crying or no crying. But, it seems as though a lesson had been learned because after a few minutes of stroking, it calmed down and fell asleep, giving us a few hours of peace.
After an hour or two of sleep, Emma woke up inspired with a name: Bazo ("problem", or "trouble" in Kinyarwanda). So now Bazo lives at our house. She eats dried minnows from the market and sleeps under my covers at night. Aside from a few small issues (eat anything close to cheese and she goes bonkers trying to get at it) she is a perfect cat. Her favorite activities, after cuddling, are all computer related: sitting on laptop keyboards (a good substitute for itunes shuffle), batting at my internet modem stick, and sitting on your lap while you type so she can watch the mouse move, as she is doing right now.
