When we left earlier that afternoon, Kali had seemed a little unsettled, but as she had yet to start nesting or lactating, we were starting to wonder whether it would happen before Merritt left for Dar next Sunday. But I guess with us gone and the house quiet, the time was right. And our concerns about potential complications were unfounded – the kittens look healthy and Kali is doing very well, eating a little, sleeping a little, and purring like a jet engine.
In the past couple of weeks, it’s been somewhat painful to watch Kali, as she’s grown uncomfortably pregnant. The expression here in Tanzania is mzito kabisa, which literally means a person who is “completely heavy.” When not sleeping on the guest bed, Kali would lounge around the house, propped up against a door frame or a wall, in order to relieve the pressure on her ever-expanding stomach. One time, after she fell asleep on a table, Merritt and I watched her kittens squirm around, pressing with their paws out on her belly – it was like a scene out of Alien.
The color of the kittens is somewhat of a surprise – we think it’s actually a mixed parentage, the little tramp. There were really three Tom cats that came over the wall and into our courtyard at one point or another – one of which we scared off. But the other two were uniquely different – one a big, strong, dish-faced calico and the other a long, lanky, traffic-cone orange tabby. Kali seemed to be pretty interested in both cats, and now each of her kittens strikingly resemble one of the two.
As for names, we are still undecided. We may leave it to the kitten’s future owners to name them. Our plan is to give the two kittens away to some of the new Peace Corps volunteers in the region, and we intend this to be Kali’s only litter. Anyway, that's the exiting news here.
