Paka: A Lesson in Being Flexible for Your Future
Note: Many of the posts from Tanzania were written after we left. However, this post was written while in Dar es Salaam, before we knew that Paka would successfully get into the U.S., receive customs approval, and become our cat.
We had planned this as our “pre-pets and pre-kids” trip – which we’ve been planning for the last two years.
Yet, two months in, we’ve fallen in love with a kitten. In Zanzibar. And now we are taking her home to New York. I’m sitting in a café in Dar es Salaam, writing this post two days after we were supposed to be home. My daydreaming of pizza and bagels was delayed by 10 days as we get everything squared away and prep the cat for a 21-hour plane trip.
Last week on Tuesday, we were waiting for the wife of a couple we were hanging out with, just standing in the loading area of a nearby hotel. Suddenly, we hear insistent meowing nearby and it took a second to identify the culprit: a very small, dirty kitten staring at us. The three of us tried to ignore her until Ananete showed up and immediately scooped her up. Frankly, I’m so grateful for each of them and their boldness. The kitten’s boldness to walk up to a bunch of adult humans and not quit meowing, her saying “I am here, I matter, and I want you to care”. Annette’s high empathy towards animals led her to pick up a cute but very dirty cat in a foreign country and bring her back to our hotel, ensuring that we would nurse the kitten back to health during our time there.
Over the week, the kitten became our 4-person joint project: figuring out what she would eat, giving her a bath to get the poop and dirt off her back legs, picking off 3 very large ticks, and figuring out how to care for her. By Thursday night, she was clean and cute, and cuddly. On top of that, I was extremely dehydrated from a day in the sun on a snorkeling boat, feeling dizzy, and leaving dinner early to rest in bed feeling tired and frustrated. Tim brought the kitten into our room to lift my spirits (again, the Best boyfriend ever….) and she just cuddled and played. Between Thursday and Friday, we were just swooning.
You see, we are both softies inside. And we love cats. And we jump into caretaker mode when we see someone we love in need.
When I was cuddling with her on Thursday night, we were trying to come to terms with having her sleep outside. Tim said, “maybe she should sleep in the bathroom.” My response: “we can’t do that unless we are taking her home with us.” She did get taken outside but eventually made it back into the bathroom that night (again, we are softies). The following day, we went back and forth on adopting her. It came down to this: if we could take her home within a couple of weeks ourselves, before a collection of US-based weddings, we would. If we couldn’t there was a hotel that took in cats and fed them, and we would take her there.
You might have guessed that adopting a cat from a foreign country and bringing it into the US (“importing it”) is no easy feat. Thankfully we are two techies who have 10 years of bureaucracy hacking between the two of us. I dove in head-first into figuring out the feasibility milestones once we agreed on what to do. Tim and I researched: • Figure out her age • Find a vet who would see her and even tell us if it was possible (checking for diseases and general health) • Find an airline that is willing to fly her in the cabin with us (under the seat in front of us in a cat carrier), and would fly a cat under 12 weeks (which we knew she wasn’t but wasn’t sure of her age) – whether in Zanzibar or the nearby major city of Dar es Salaam • Find out the US regulations for importing a pet from a foreign country. These regulations are governed by the CDC, Dept of Agriculture, US Fish and Wildlife, the state you are living, the “port of entry” (NY’s JFK airport for us), and Customs and Border Protection. It makes going to the DMV look simple. • Confirm my understanding of these regulations with NY State, whom I called as soon as their office opened (8:30 am their time, 4:30 pm my time – I was counting the minutes)
In a couple of hours, we found an airline that would fly cats between 10 and 12 weeks (Turkish Airlines), exactly what documentation she needed to be accepted in the US (and the process), and a veterinarian that would see her the next day. The vet also confirmed that she was old enough that with a week or so, she’d be 10 weeks old – just old enough to fly.
Now we needed to buy a cat carrier on a tourist island in a country where most people don’t have pets, book a ferry to get to Dar es Salaam (which we weren’t planning on visiting), get all of us to the vet, and find a place to stay that accepts pets. It was 5 pm. And we did it with the help of the hotel owner (Daeli) and manager (Dadi).
The next morning, our little family woke up at 4:30 am to load everyone into the car. The kitten was in the newly acquired cat carrier, we drove 2 hours to the ferry. Took the ferry for 2 hours, and then got to the vet for her first exam. He concluded that she was generally healthy and would be able to travel after we gave her some time to grow and strengthen her body.
Now, 5 days later, the kitten has a name: Paka. Paka means “cat” in Swahili, the national language in Tanzania. It felt fitting to have her name be part of where she’s from. We do get laughs from folks here about it, “yeah, but what’s her actual name”, which is great. Paka is everyone’s favorite kitten. We also call her “tuna face”, as she launches her face and two front paws into her food dish when eating, walking away with a lot of tuna juice and smell on her nose. (When she had a cold with a runny nose we switched to “snotty tuna face”.) She’s pooping solid – which was a milestone. She’s playing like a hyper kitten. She’s still incredibly under the weight the internet says (she’s 1 lb., the internet says a kitten her age should be 2-3 lbs.), and probably small for her age, but she’s a force to be reckoned with.
Sometimes, it is clear to me that she is just happy to have a warm creature to cuddle up to as Mom and Dad. There are moments where I feel her being nervous that we will leave her, or that she won’t get fed (which she has become a vocal brat about, but who isn’t in the toddler phase). She is the most trusting cat either of us has ever known. She is playful and hyper. She likes play biting our hands more than the handful of toys we have. She prefers crumpled-up receipts and rocks from the hotel over the one small ball we could find for her.
Essentially, every time she sits on me, I feel both the weight of love and responsibility for this small little creature who doesn’t even know the future she signed herself up for by choosing us. She just wanted some cuddles and some parents, and she’s gotten that. She also has a 21-hour plane ride, the excitement of getting through US customs, and we are still going to travel after we bring her to the US. (She’s staying with Tim’s parents, who are great with cats and kittens). She’s not getting us as full-time parents until February, which I do feel a little guilty about. But, after that, she gets us for the rest of her life. And that’s exciting for all of us.
I mean, this whole thing is still crazy. Totally crazy. We are in Tanzania 10 days longer than our original plan - all to get this cat ready for the long journey. We are in a city we hadn’t planned to visit, with our day of departure adjusting every couple of days. While we are here, we mostly sit in our room, playing with the kitten and relaxing. All for a bold kitten who walked up to us at a hotel in Zanzibar and told us with her body language that she mattered. She was right. And now she matters to us.
The day I got dehydrated, I was talking to two lovely women on the boat, sharing how our trip has continued to shift. One made an apt observation, “I love that you are keeping things flexible and that your trip is continuing to be flexible.” She was responding to our shift in the planning process, and our recent shift from visiting Japan to going to Cambodia and Vietnam instead. (This was pre-Paka.) I’ve been thinking about her observation a lot in the week since.
This cat came into our lives at such a unique time for everyone. If the kitten wasn’t in such bad shape and so young, she wouldn’t have been meowing so insistently. If the kitten hadn’t been picked up by Annette, she probably would not be alive today, just a week later, given the shape she was in. If the kitten had not been so trusting, she would not have cuddled with us, swooning us really. If we were not doing the quit-our-jobs-and-travel thing, we would not have the flexibility to get this cat back to the US with 10 extra days in-country. If we were not in tech, we would not have the financial flexibility to do this project and pull money from outside of our trip budget. If we were not cat lovers and spontaneous periodically, then we would not have done this. If we hadn’t worked in bureaucracy, the import process would seem insurmountable.
Yet, all these things aligned. And we saw it. So, we stayed flexible and took the leap of faith.
Plus, Paka is amazing. She’s curious, smart, trusting, chill, hyper, and loving.
My lesson: remain flexible for when your future starts meowing at you. You won’t regret it.