Cat in a Box

Hello hello dear friends! Hope all is well out there, I'm missing you and home at every turn. For instance, I saw a magazine clipping of a chocolate chip cookie last night and got all nostalgic - dammit! Chocolate chip isn't even my favorite kind of cookie! So, I have overcome a very small hurdle, one of 1,000 to be sure. I was really bogged down a few days ago, wondering if I could truly make it isolated on an island without a clean water supply, fresh food, and the most insane, loud and bothersome rats on the face of the planet. Right when I was stewing in my despair, who happens to call me... oh, Laura Vance, that's who! This is the girl who upon hearing that I dropped my brand new ipod (also known as my best friend) into the ocean, promptly sent me a new one. Ahhhh, once again I have my sanity! THANKS LAURA!!!!! So upon talking to her, she told me about a great friend of hers who once served in the Peace Corps. She told me how after some time at site, he just started laughing about everything. He called his Peace Corps life "Bizarro World." That made perfect sense to me and was the exact kick in the pants I needed. Things are crazy here, things are absurd (by US relativity) and that's just how it's gonna be - laughing is the medicine that makes it go down. No matter how many rats chew through my tupperware containers designed to keep out roaches, I will be just fine. NOW, let's get to a story:
Sooooo, as you know (if you've read my previous blogs), my cat Bogi has proved to be maybe more of a hinderence than a help. He INSISTED on using the loo inside my bure (hut) and was just annoying beyond belief with constant meowing and attention seeking. UGH. So, he moved to another household that provide him fish scraps and I found peace and quiet. Anyhow, much to my utter dismay, I discovered rats partying in my bure at night. And by partying, I mean borderline raving here... until the sun came up. They run around the rafters and furniture, squeaking, squabbling, chewing, and shitting. Their sense of entitlement is outta control, and thus I'm about to declare war on these punks and, there will be blood. Wait, wait, before we get to all that....
So, I go locate Bogi and bring him back into my bure where there's a silver plate of tuna awaiting him as an indication of my  good will. He chows down and a little while later I get a most welcome invitation to eat dinner at my neighbor's house for the first time. So, just as we're hunkering down to dine, Bogi decides to make a surprise appearance. Cute, cute.... except that his hind-quarters are covered in diarrhea. Yeaaahhhhh. So there he is slinking around the dining cloth (we eat on the floor in Fiji) and I damn near have a heart-attack. Mortified I grabbed him and ran outside only to realize there was NOTHING I could do. No water to bathe him with, and no doors to keep him out of the house. The family is calling out to me that "It's OK, come, come, eat." Sigh. Laugh. OK, so we are now resigned to eat fish in lolo with PoopyPants slinking around our backs. This family consists of saints.
The point is, Bogi sucks. He has issues and I don't know if it's a genetic thing or environmental or what. Thus, I decided it'd be best to get another cat while I'm on the mainland, one that works. So, I've been asking around. Who has seen a kitten? Any wandering around your house? Any on the streets? Basically, I've asked all of my friends to grab any cat they can for me. Well, one morning it looked like things were perking up nicely as Claudia got word from her workplace that there was a nice cat that wandered around the property, snatching up leftover lunch morsels. Woo hoo! We went into recognizance mode. (on the phone with work people) "OK, give her our cell number and tell her to call as soon as there's a sighting. (2 hours later) Oh, no sighting today, crap. OH, REALLY!? A cat at his house, tell him we want it!! (5 minutes later) OH! You've captured the cat at work! Great, we'll be right there!!!." Before Claudia ends the call, she passes the cell phone over to me and says "there's  your cat." I hear multiple loud, wailing meows over the phone that make me feel more nervous than anything. But, what the hell, it's a cat!
I'm so pumped with enthusiasm I'm doing everything I can to slow my pace as Claudia, Megan, and I walk over to Claudia's office. As we enter the building, a lovely Fijian woman is flagging us to come over to a broom closet. I'm ready with cardboard box in hand. She then procedes to very slowly crack the closet door, as though a wild, unknown entity was about to burst through the crack. Feeling more nervous now. The Fijian lady shuts the door again and moves on to plan B in her head ... she grabs my box, opens the door, and slips in every so carefully. Door shuts. We hear scuffling, we hear her laughing. "Maybe you should go help her Zoe," says Claudia. Uhhhhh... so, I crack open the door and try to get my bearings... the lady is hunched on the ground, reaching under a counter, where... I catch sight of the biggest f'n cat I've ever seen (next to Darcy's old cat). It's a tan tabby tom-cat, with yellow very sunken eyes. He's ears are etched with evidence of many fights, and little patches of mange adorn his rock-hard flanks. Yeah, this was a stud of a tom-cat. And I was frightened.
The Fijian lady cooed at him and somehow got his rigid angry self into her arms. She then lowered him into the box. I was laughing hard now at the absurdity of our attempt. He was CLEARLY as big as the box. We got him in, but he was SO big, that we were closing the flaps right on his face... pushing the cardboard down right on his eyeballs! AHAHA! At this point, I voiced the ridiculousness of what we were trying to do.

A. He's a huge tomcat that's probably 8 years old. I will NOT be able to bring him onto a boat to get to my island without getting mauled and/or kicked off the boat.
B. We cannot contain him in the box even for 3 minutes without him doing the hulk and bursting forth from the weak cardboard with shear muscle flexing
C. He's ugly and really scary to me. PERIOD

So,  we let the box flaps loose and he elegantly lept out of the box like "yeah, that's right you idiots." Later I tried to call him over, to sorta apologize. He looked at me, meowed, turned and marched away with a huge set of cat cajones dangling in his wake. No cat for me. Maybe Bogi will have grown a brain by the time I return to my island tomorrow? I don't know. IN the meantime I am armed with every rat-killing poision, glue, knife, and other device that Fiji has to offer. You'll get that scoop next time. Later!!!!