May 7 2008 Didn’t I learn anything from watching “The Lion King?”

There is a natural order to the world, a “circle of life” if you want to call it that. It’s survival of the fittest, and it is not our job to save every single animal on the planet. I always felt this to be the case, but my judgment lapsed last Friday morning and now my life will never be the same. I went to Farjara on Wednesday (PAY DAY!!!) and then returned on Thursday. All night on Thursday I heard small cats crying but did not think much of it. Then on Friday morning I was hanging out with my host family like I ALWAYS do, and I heard them again. I asked were the sound was coming from, and my host sister, Fatou, took me to see the kittens. It turns out that our compound cat died giving birth to three kittens a few days before. Some how two had managed to survive. I immediately fell in love with the first one that I found, and I stupidly just had to save her. (I blame Missy for this and hope that she is laughing on the other side of “the rainbow bridge.” Look up mourning the loss of an animal sometime, there’s some really interesting stuff out there.) So I find one kitten there and immediately decided that I must try to feed it. First we try to use a plastic bag as sort of a nipple, and then I figured out that she could drink out of an eye dropper. I took the kitten home, and fell in love with the damn thing! Not too much time pasted before my host aunt brought the other survivor. Now I had two cats. I told the family that I would raise them and then put them outside. They seemed to think that this was a great idea because they needed another cat to replace the one that they lost anyway. The first couple of days were so much fun. I now had little friends to talk to, play with, feed, and give baths. I went to a circumcision ceremony on Saturday and worried the whole day about them. I was such a proud mother. Then what I like to call the post partum depression set in. By Sunday evening I officially started to hate the kittens. What was once so cute about them now made me hate them. They would sleep through the night (THANK GOD), but as soon as they woke up they cried all the time. People are always telling me that whenever they walk by my house they can hear the kittens crying. I always tell them to try to live with them. No animals are clean here at all, so now the stupid kittens keep getting ticks. Yesterday I had to pick them off the kittens, and I’m pretty sure that I got one as well. Now I refuse to touch them at all. I’m trying to teach them to drink their milk out of a bowl (not having much luck) so when I have to touch them to feed them I wrap them in magazine pages. At this point I really just want to drop them off in the bush somewhere. They’ve stressed me out beyond anything ever will in my life. I now feel horrible for every mother on this planet. I have to wash them, do their laundry, feed them; the whole thing sucks frankly. I joined the Peace Corps to put off that life as long as I could!!! I’ve asked my friends if they would think less of me if I did just drop the kittens somewhere, and they’ve all pretty much told me to just get rid of them. It’s stressful enough being here without having to worry about two other creatures everyday. I’m sort of hoping that maybe I can just drop them outside, and maybe they’ll just come back for food or something. I might also just put them in my back yard. They’ve got to get used to living outside, so why not learn now. I fell horrible about it, and know that I should have just let nature take its course. I’m pretty sure that I am going crazy at this point anyway. I hear small animals and I start to cringe because I think that they might be kittens. At this point it is probably the best mentally for me to just get rid of them. I’m in the process of trying to find PCVs that want cats, but I may just have to drop them off somewhere. They managed to survive three days alone as newborns, so they must be able to do it now 2 weeks older. I am going to visit a friend that lives a couple of hours away next weekend, and they can’t survive alone for three days anyway, so they are going outside one way or the other. Hopefully I can find them a home before then, but if not, then they’ll just have to learn to survive. If I can just get them to drink out of a bowl, then I can just leave them water outside while I am gone. Animals here are much tougher anyway. (Or at least that is what I tell myself to feel less like a monster.) I think I’ve learned a valuable lesson in all of this: It’s not my job to save the world. Better these two cats, then an entire village. I’m here to assist people, not take on all the weight of the world.