The Clove Saga, Part 1 (Long)

My cat, Clove, is a large, cranky but lovable hair shedding machine that has known me since before she could even open her eyes. I held her as a tiny kitten and a few weeks later, welcomed her to my home. She is mostly white, with beige and charcoal grey patches, generally loves to receive cuddles around her face, but not so much on her body, has a penchant for “making biscuits” on my tummy as I drift off to sleep, and likes to sleep with her head resting in my hand.

While the plans for moving to Botswana had been put into place at least 6 months before the move was to take place, I had never quite solidified plans regarding Clove. You might think that before choosing various objects to bring across the latitude of the Atlantic and down the longitudinal length of the continent of Africa, to the small dusty, desert city that is the capital of Botswana, that my first priority in planning would be to figure out what to do with a 16 pound, somewhat testy, 9-year old cat.

I had decided that if I was going to sign on to the Botswana Adventure™, Clove was going to come as well. See, as much as I profess that Clove is totally attached to me and is virtually inconsolably unhappy in my absence, and have numerous witnesses that I can call upon to vouch to that effect, I must admit that I am quite attached to her in the way that most pet owners are attached to their pets. Thus, it had always occurred to me that I would bring Clove to Botswana with me, and despite the leading questions of my friend Christine, who was much more appropriately concerned about the logistics and timing of the thing than I, I never really gave much thought as to how this was to come about.

By about a month and a half before T=0, I had resigned to the idea that it was probably best to leave Clove behind in the States. I had secretly hoped that my roommate Anu would somehow volunteer to take on Clove. Clove is a somewhat cranky cat, and for some reason, unknown to neither me nor Anu, had quite taken to Anu. Actually, we do know the reason: food. Anu diligently fed Clove on the many occasions when I was gone for the night/weekend/week, and even on many occasions where I simply overslept. At 16 pounds, you can imagine that one thing Clove loves dearly is food, and it follows that she would be particularly amorous to the owner of the hand that feeds her. When Anu failed to spontaneously volunteer a 10-month stint at Clove-sitting, I was forced to come out and ask her, but being such a huge favor to ask of your friends, I attempted to do so in an indirect way. I emailed her. And cc’ed my former roommate Edna to spread the risk of the investment. In the email, I asked whether she (or my former roommate Edna) knew “anybody” who would be interested in taking care of the rotund, cranky beast for 10-11 months. The answer was made clear and I was then forced to resort to the fall back plan of passing Clove off on my parents.

My parents live in Vermont in a beautiful small house that has been shaped and re-shaped by my dad, with the help of his many friends who are in the business of shaping houses, over the years. It is surrounded with immaculate gardens, all plotted and tended by my parents, each with different themes and settings. There is a lovely sloping garden of primroses and hostas, a quaint stone path meandering through to provide the everyday garden stroller an intimate view of the varied flowering plants at their feet, under the shade of some trees of adequate but not intimidating height. In this same glade lie a few planted trees, and, importantly, what is referred to as “My Tree”. “My Tree” is actually a misnomer. It is a young oak tree, just over 10 years old that I gave to my father as a birthday gift. I grew the sapling from an acorn that I collected in 1996 while lunching under a particularly shady oak near Andover, MA. Each time I come home, I pay a visit to the tree to see how it is getting along, and my father is always happy to give me news of the tree’s wellbeing and talk about how deeply red its leaves turn in the fall. Last winter, the tree was gravely harmed by a snowfall that laidened the tree with snow so wet and heavy that it bent the young tree’s trunk to breaking, and my father was forced to prune the upper half of the tree to minimize the risk of infection and rot. The tree has recovered, somewhat, but perhaps it will never return to the tall, graceful, slender rising oak that it had once promised. Now it is more likely that it will display the architecture of a two-headed tree, which in the end may be nice as those are often the most fun to climb.

This garden is hemmed by a hedge of cedar to the south, and a stand of evergreens to the west, which is best to avoid if you tend to be the careless type as the evergreens mark the territory one could call the “outdoor litter box” for all household pets.

Veering round the cedar barrier, you come into the spiral garden. This plot was designed with paths that twist inward in such a way that the everyday stroller will always see new plants and flowers as they cast their gaze upon the garden beds along their walk. It’s quite beautiful in the summertime with the bee balm and delphiniums in flower. To the east of the spiral garden, and cut into the side of the hill is the small garden of heather, perched atop a curving stone wall. Circling back toward the house, the vegetable garden lies off the east, the Christmas tree stands tall and singular above the primrose garden, and you’ll pass the remnants of the first flower garden at my parents house, now simply a bed with a lilac bush or two. Behind the house lies another garden and on the west side of the house, another lawn with lilac, rose bushes and apple trees.

It is to this idyllic setting that I was to deposit Clove as a last resort. I say as a last resort because there were some caveats to this option. First, as the astute may have inferred, reading between the lines, my parents already had other pets. A cheerful Belgian Shepherd named Hanna and a cool-as-a-cucumber cat named Alex. Hanna and Alex are great friends, despite Hanna’s proclivity for a bit of cat-chasing, all in good fun of course. While Clove has lived with another cat in the past (Edna’s cat Pandora), she has rarely interacted with a dog and I was somewhat worried about how she would take to the situation. In addition, my parents’ pets are outdoors animals. Sure, they let them inside the house off and on throughout the day, but come bed time, it’s “out!” and the furry animals are sent packing before the fur-less ones trudge up to sleep. In the winter, on particularly cold nights, the furry ones are sometimes allowed some respite in the warmth of the house, but otherwise they huddle together in Hanna’s doghouse, keeping close to conserve warmth. Clove, being an indoor cat for her 9 years, would likely have some trouble adjusting to this, a life outdoors, but I had no doubt that she would love it in the end.

There was only one problem. My parents balked at the idea of keeping an indoor cat and I cannot blame them for balking. It is their house. The pets they keep live on their terms. Why should I expect any exceptions? I assumed that if they were to take care of Clove would live inside for a while until she adjusted, then gradually be shown the door. My parents have lost familiarity with such things as litter boxes, massive amounts of cat hair in the house, cats scratching on furniture, etc. Their cats have always done their business outside, whether it be littering, shedding, or scratching on objects. So upon discussion with me parents, it was made clear that the Vermont option was truly a last resort.

So I went looking for options. I emailed Christine, who is rather connected in the cat world. She is a wonderful person who has a deep love for all animals and is well connected in the pet-sitting scene in the Boston area. She recommended that I speak with another woman, who posted my email to a mailing list of cat-foster care folks, etc. The thing about email, which most people know, is that it never dies. It’s quite easy to pass the thing on, without a second thought, to your friends or acquaintances, and there’s an undefined length of time, the critical email event horizon, during which recipients will read the email and decide that it is worthwhile sending the email on others on their contact list, or even drafting a direct reply to the email. After a certain point in time, the email becomes dated. It is read but the reader realizes that the information is dated and they cut short a reply or a forward and simply delete the email, breaking the chain. Or it sits in an inbox, unread until someday that inbox is archived or cleaned out. Or it gets deleted without being opened. My hypothesis is that the relationship between the time-stamp of an email sent out to a large list of recipients and the readers[slash]passers-on per unit time post-initial send follows a distinct distribution, and my guess is poisson. Somebody could write a dissertation on this. Probably somebody already has.

So my email to Christine’s friend got sent around the horn and suddenly I was receiving emails from random people that I’ve never met, commiserating with my situation. Most of them were of the variety of “I wish I could help you out, but unfortunately ____. I will ask around for you, and pass your email on to my friend(s).” Others were interested in taking Clove, as they had small children that might like to have a cat about the house. My good friend Jason was interested as his son Louis has apparently become fond of pets, and he thought that maybe it would be good for Louis. I adore Louis. He’s an adventurous toddler, brimming with character, determination and spunk. He has a great sense of curiosity about him, and he is not shy to take on new things. But given that Clove occasionally hisses and swats a paw at me, I had to admit to Jason that Clove probably wasn’t the appropriate cat for Louis. I similarly turned down all other solicitors that proposed to take on Clove as a companion for their children.

I did receive one rather odd email; one person emailed to say that my parents were essentially insensitive jerks for not readily accepting Clove and good luck with finding a place for her. I was baffled. I didn’t know this person from Adam, and yet they felt qualified to criticize my parents. I deleted the email promptly.

I decided to email the administrator for Shanthi’s job in Botswana and ask her what the prospects are for domestic house cats in Botswana. Her reply set the whole thing in motion. She said that they had everything the young (well, 9 year old), healthy (well, 16 pounds) cat needed to survive in Botswana. Hills/Iams/Purina cat chow, litter, vets, everything. I also emailed a vet on the ground there. Apparently, the vet school associated with UPenn also sends vets to Botswana, so we’d have access to experienced vets while in Botswana. So I thought about it and made a decision.

I would bring Clove to Botswana. It was early July. I had a month and a half to make this happen.