Kittens

Several weeks ago I was walking out of Tirana at night. I was on my way to Greece to find a job and wanted to make an early start. Knowing my propensity for procrastination, I left Mariah and the hostel just before dark, intending to hike a few kilometers out of town, camp near the road and start hitching first thing in the morning.

All was going well until I stopped across the street from a gravel pit to smoke and drink a bit of water about five kilometers down the road. I heard a meow and looked up to see a tiny kitten scampering across the road towards me. Four, maybe five weeks old, friendly and adorable, he was with his much smaller, more subdued sister. No mother was in sight and I thought maybe she was out hunting for food. But after 20 minutes of playing and feeding them some chicken from the sandwich 'Riah had made me and giving them a bit of water none had shown up and there was an dead adult not too far down the road. Maybe the mother maybe not; dead animals are not uncommon in Albania. In any case they were filthy and hungry. The female was considerably smaller and less vigorous than her brother and even with a mother probably wouldn't live if she had to compete with him for food.

So I did the only thing I could and carried them back to the hostel cradled in my no longer white t-shirt. Mariah was up and immediately sprung into mother mode. We bathed them and fed them and they slept curled-up with me in my sleeping bag that night.

Edwin, the owner of the hostel was surprised to see me in the morning and less than pleased with his new charges. A kind, big-hearted man he'd learned the dangers of taking in strays the hard way. But Mariah promised to take care of them and find them homes and he wasn't about to kick them out.

They have since been adopted by friends of the hostel workers. I'm told they are doing very well, attacking everything that moves, growing fast, eating anything left unlocked and generally behaving like normal kittens.


Last night walking into town from the boat yard here in Rovinj I passed the security guard gently picking an orange and white kitten off a fence. He's been friendly to us and seems harmless if usually drunk and keeps two completely ineffective guard dogs. In his broken but comprehensible English he explained that the "bebe cata" was for the dogs to kill.

Last week he told my boss that the young male German Shepard had killed a mother cat and her two kittens the night before and was quite proud of him. Brutal perhaps but this is a fishing town and stray cats must be a constant problem. But his carefully and deliberately bringing in a cat for the dogs to kill horrifies me. Of course I wished him a good night and continued into town. Come to think of it, that was the first cat I've seen in the 10 days I've been here.