KC Casey, et al?

No.  You see, it really doesn’t work as a title.  I’m afraid we’ll just have to stick with the cats.

But yes, there is now a puppy in the house, too!

I'm the baby. Gotta love me!

Both my husband and I always had dogs while we were growing up.  But we couldn’t keep them in our dorms in college, and after we got married we lived in apartments without enough space for anything but a toy dog.  And we’re big dog people — think, German Shephards, Labrador Retrievers, Collies — so instead we just enjoyed having the cats.

Then we moved to Nepal.  Where we are, to our extreme confusion, immensely rich.

Our house has three floors and a ridiculous number of rooms.  It’s surrounded by a decent-sized yard, and the yard is surrounded by an indecently-sized fence.

It took us about three days after arrival before we started murmuring at each other, “You know, we could get a dog.”

We hesitated for many moons.  We’re well aware that someday we’ll board another plane for an excruciating series of continent and flight changes in order to return to the United States.  It was plenty fun enough trying to transport two kitties with us through all of that — adding a dog into the mix seemed like an invitation for mind-altering trauma.  Leading to insanity.

But, with time, the scars from our travel here have begun to fade.  In their place, the ridiculous amount of personal room we enjoy has seemed to get bigger and bigger.  And, correspondingly, Kathmandu’s population of street dogs has seemed to grow.  Every time we see one eating from a garbage pile, we cringe.  And a couple of months ago we started pointing out to each other all the time, “Aw, look at that dog — it’s so pretty!” and “Oh, this dog following us is so sweet.  I bet it would go home with us…”

But that didn’t really seem like the best way to do things.  Far from pampered American pets they may be, but most adult Kathmandu street dogs seem quite comfortable with their lives.  In general, they’re healthy, and they trot down the sides of the streets with their tails wagging.  They curl up on doorsteps to sleep, and I’ve never seen anyone chase them away.  In fact, when the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre started rounding up dogs to vaccinate and neuter them, they encountered suspicion in many areas, from people who lived in the same neighborhood they took the dogs from.  No individual would lay claim to any street dog.  Nevertheless, the reaction of the community at large was along the lines of, “Hey, what are you doing with our dogs?”

The volunteers and veterinarians explained they were helping to prevent diseases and unwanted litters, and they continue to assure locals in each neighborhood that once the dogs they sweep up are altered, vaccinated, and disease-free, they’ll be returned back to the exact same street they came from.

So Sean and I realized that grabbing a dog off the street here might have been only slightly less insulting than stealing a dog out of someone’s front yard in the US.  Of course, since we knew about the KAT Centre itself, we finally decided just to go look.  We hardly needed to work all October, anyway.  Most of Kathmandu shut down to celebrate Dasaiin and Tihar.  We had nothing to celebrate but Halloween, so we had plenty of extra time.

And, coincidentally, a litter of 5 puppies had just been dropped off at the KAT Centre the day before we first went.  The staff estimated the puppies were only about 4 weeks old, far too young to leave their mother.  But their mother was MIA, and though they weren’t sure how healthy the puppies were, the KAT Centre staff took on the job of caring for them.  And made certain to mention to us that actually it wouldn’t be very healthy for such young puppies to stay at the Centre long-term, what with strange adult dogs coming in all the time; they’d really be better off in a home.

This is, of course, the opposite of the situation at most shelters in the US.  There, the puppies and kittens rapidly get adopted, while the dogs and cats sit in cages for long days, until their time is up, and most are euthanized.  Here, the adults are considered strong enough to return to the streets only a few days after coming in, whereas little puppies would be much better off in the home of someone who would care for them.

We decided to think about it, and came back the next week.  That morning, two of the five puppies had been adopted.  We studied the other three — and when the little white one poked her nose over her sister’s back and peered up at me with baby-ish black eyes, very young and happy and interested in everything, I already knew I wanted to take her home.

So she is here, and has been with us about a week and a half.  She’s very tiny!  When we adopted her, the staff at the Centre reminded us she was only about 5 weeks old.  She’s had stomach trouble off and on — when we took her to be looked at by a vet today, they told us nothing very serious was wrong (no temperature, no sign of infectious disease or worms), just that we’d started feeding her kibble too early.  At the Centre, she and her sisters and all the other dogs had eaten rice mixed with water and shredded chicken; at home, I’d fed her rice mixed with water and kibble for a few days, and when she started ignoring the rice and focusing on the kibble, I stopped offering the rice.  Now, we’re trying to return her to mostly rice, made interesting with bits of chicken, for another few weeks before she tries Purina puppy kibble “weaning to three months” again.  If she had her mother still, she wouldn’t be weaned yet.  She needs very mild food.

The big question:  What’s her name?  Mostly, so far, we just call her puppy.  The day we got her, Alaska suggested itself — because of certain figures in the news, perhaps? — and because she’s such a snowy white, with only a bit of tan on her ears.  Then again, most people who adopt dogs here give them Nepali words for names, so Himal has suggested itself, too, as the word that literally means “snow-covered mountain.”  Lately, because we are weird, we are leaning toward giving our abandoned Kathmandu street puppy the luxurious name of “Alaskan Himal.”

Still, mostly, we call her puppy.  And, after all, L’orange got her excessively French name precisely because for the first few weeks we had her, we just called her, in English, “the orange one.”  So we’ll see.

The other big question:  How well does she get along with the cats?  See for yourself:

Hmm, what is that the cat is leaving behind?

It's colorful! It jingles! It must be meant for puppies! (Um, why are the cats staring at me like that?)

Either this is proof that Regina is promiscuous, and will sleep with anyone... or else she sorta likes the puppy.

In short, the puppy was in the house less than a day, with much staring of cats at closed doors, before the cats managed to gang up on a door and force it to open enough to look nose-to-nose at the puppy.  When she tried to chew on ears and tails, Regina swatted her twice to teach her manners… and then let the puppy curl up with her for a nap.  For several days, L’Orange mostly spent time staring at this totally new creature apparently unlike any she’d ever seen, and she’s recently started trying to figure out if it’s appropriate to play with the strange creature as if she’s a kitten.  With two interested cat mommies, she may just end up growing into a respectable cat one of these days.

The Past 3 Weeks, in 30 Seconds

Yes, once again, I have disappeared for a suspiciously long time.  The truth is, again, I’ve had computer issues.  And I’ve been sick.  And I’ve been busy.  For example:

Nepal celebrated this:

Tihar is a Nepali festival to welcome the New Year with light. For non-Nepalis, it's an excuse to be a pyromaniac for three days straight. Whee!

Our household celebrated this:

L'Orange uses her strong cat magic to summon glowing jack o'lanterns all the way to Nepal for Halloween.

We adopted this:

Oh, dear. There are already calls to add her in the title, too. As if it weren't long enough as it is...

And we saw this:

The Himalayas rise over Phewa Lake in Pokhara.

But, as you see, I took pictures all along the way.  So — as long as the computer and internet continue to work — I will be very busy with posting once again.

By the way, are you American?  Is it November 4th your time?  Then VOTE!!!!

(And if it seems like a bother, just think of poor little me, and thousands like me, filling out our requests for absentee ballots months ago, and then going through the ballot itself weeks ago, and getting it stamped and mailing it through the U. S. Embassy.  Look, just drive to your local polling place and pull the lever or fill out the bubbles or whatever!!!)

Nepali of the Day:

Ma baraami thiyo:  I was sick.

Ahile ma baraami lagdaina.:  I’m not sick now.

Nepal Sambat:  native Nepali calendar, mostly used by Newars; New Year starts on 4th day of Tihar

Newar:  ethnic group native to the Kathmandu valley of Nepal

puja:  worship

biraalo:  cat

kukur:  dog

himal:  mountain

tol:  lake

World Animal Day

I’ve had a very busy and fun day.  Again, there’s a slew of pictures and text that will take another week to post — and I suspect I’ll get a similar amount tomorrow.  And I still have a bit left for Gokarna, too.

But today I’ve decided to take a break from those.

On behalf of World Animal Day, I encourage you to visit one (or more!) of the sites below:

ASPCA

World Wildlife Fund

Click (for free!) to donate at the Animal Rescue Site

Click (for free!) to donate on behalf of Pets

Click (for free!) to donate on behalf of Big Cats

Click (for free!) to donate on behalf of Primates

More info on World Animal Day

UPDATE, OCTOBER 12, 2008:  Per Debbie Dawson’s comment below, I definitely encourage visits to http://www.worldanimalday.org.uk for more info about World Animal Day — and events highlighting its simple, easily-shared mission to celebrate animal life in all its forms, and to acknowledge the diverse ways in which animals enrich human lives.

And how did I find out today was World Animal Day?

All credit due to the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre!

This banner, accompanied by several others, all similar, was posted around the statue in the middle of Narayan Ghopal Chowk, ie, the intersection where the Ring Road meets Maharajgunj in northern Kathmandu. The Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre is further north on Maharajgunj.  They’ve only been open since 2004, but they do amazing work.  Most dogs in Kathmandu aren’t personal pets — they roam the streets, and the “KAT” Centre estimates there are approximately 25,000 of them just within the Ring Road.

There is animal abuse in Kathmandu.  But that also exists all over the world.  Just because most dogs here aren’t personal pets doesn’t mean they aren’t loved.  The KAT Centre staff discovered, when they started rounding up dogs to vaccinate and spay them, local people eyed them suspiciously and demanded to know what they intended to do with the dogs.  And when they assured them of their intentions — treat sick dogs, vaccinate them against diseases, spay the females to reduce the massive amount of unwanted litters, then return them back to the same neighborhood from which they were taken — people tended to calm down.  Mostly.  And then, when the dogs in fact returned a few days or weeks later, treated and happy…  Well, despite how every individual in the neighborhood would deny owning the dog, groups would come out to welcome the returnee, with tidbits and petting.

Often, the worst animal abuse in Nepal is sheer neglect.  And that has less to do with wanton cruelty than the simple nature of poverty itself.  When you struggle to feed your own familly, the dog that patiently sleeps outside day and night really has no choice but to content itself on picking through the trash.

Still, not every family faces the same problems.  So, if you feel so moved, I encourage you to today give your pet an extra rub, or click The Animal Rescue Site link above and click-to-donate (it only takes a second!  you’ll get no spam! no one charges you anything!), or even donate ten bucks or so to the ASPCA or another animal welfare group.

Yes, there are a lot of causes in the world.  It’s impossible for any one person to fix them all.  But helping just a little bit, even just now and then — even just once a year! — can combine millions of tiny bits of help into a giant step toward fixing the problem.  And for the creatures that purr, or bark, or make us laugh, or carry us around, or even provide us with food and clothes…  Well, the next cuddling cat or tail-wagging dog or merrily singing bird you meet will let you know they appreciate having a healthy life, too.

The happiest cats in Kathmandu?

L'orange enjoying the aroma and crumbs in an empty food bag.

Nepali of the Day:

biraalo:  cat

khukur:  dog

khukura:  chicken

gau:  cow

hatti:  elephant

kaug:  crow [pronounced like 'cog']

parivar:  pigeon [not to be confused with pariwar, family]

Happy 2 Month Anniversary, and Over 1000 Hits, And…

Mauph Garnus!

I’m afraid it has again been a while since I’ve written a post.  And I can’t blame it on the internet this time — I’ve just been busy or exhausted.

In my last post I wrote that our stuff had gotten here.  We spent several days unpacking it, and we’re still straightening up the house even now.  It’s nearly done…

But meanwhile we’ve done other things, too.  I thought at the end of last Sunday that I could write a week’s worth of posts just about that day.  I still could, and might.

Meanwhile I’m distracted by today.

This evening we went down to Thamel to pick up some paintings we bought last Sunday and left to be framed.  They’re AMAZING — the artist is very talented.  His style is mildly impressionistic.  We were first drawn in by his painting of a tiny shack on a snow-covered mountainside, with taller peaks in the distance — a cloudy mist obscures the entire landscape, so realistic it seems about to pour off the canvas.  Then we discovered he’d painted another work of matching size and color and style, except of people in two small boats setting out on a misty lake.  And picture number three seemed the perfect fulcrum to place in the middle of the other two long paintings.  It’s smaller, more of a square, and depicts the sillhouette of a heavily-laden yak in the middle of crossing a rickety bridge over a cavern — still in the same eerie mist.

Yes, pictures are worth more than words.  We’ll unwrap & hang up the paintings soon — I’ll take pictures of them then, to post.

On a related note, if you’re visiting Kathmandu, and you go to Thamel, find you way to the 21st Century Art Gallery in Seven Corners.  It’s well worth it.

Seven Corners?  The area, on the …. west side (I think) of Thamel… in any case, just head straight in from the entrance by the King’s former palace and turn right when the road dead-ends by the Barnes & Noble Book (sic!).  Then, if you pay attention, you can notice the road zagging seven times in a row around (7) sharp corners.  Voila, Seven Corners.

Now, if you’ve ever spent time in the DC metropolitan area, you may know of another Seven Corners.  There it’s not just a line of 7 zags–oh, no!  Instead, there are honestly seven separate roads that all converge on the SAME spot.  The traffic lights there are the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen.  The traffic always has minor jams, and beeping horns; really, looking back, I’m amazed traffic moves through that intersection as well as it does.  There are several places where there’s only space for two cars between a row of stoplights separating the rival roads.  Some lucky people get to go straight through; others have the choice of not just right or left turns, but right-sharp or right-forward or left-sharp or left-forward turns.  The angles are just extraordinary.

The art gallery here nestles in one of the zags.  While considering the paintings, we spent a while staring out at the motorcycles zooming around the corners or the cars slowly beeping along or, most commonly, the wandering people.  And I realized something:  while the traffic in Kathmandu scared me when we first got here, now I think that when I return the traffic back in the US will positively terrify me.  Blood and bloody ashes, they drive so fast!

And in the US you can’t exactly duck out into the middle of the road and calmly hold out your palm, low, near your waist, in a stop gesture, and expect all the cars (and motorcycles) to obey.  That irratated me to no end when I first got here; now I’ve realized it’s just the way pedestrians get around.  My husband has been doing it for a while.  I did it for the first time today, when I was hurrying across the main road into/out of Thamel with the heavy painting.  And the traffic was already mostly stopped, anyway, all the drivers leaning on their horns in protest of a jam around the next corner, so the on-coming drivers resigned themselves to waiting an extra 30 seconds to scoot forward instead of taking advantage of the meter-long gap forming between them and the car they followed.

One more thing–for the first time today, I saw real Kathmandu cats!  I did glimpse one kitty while we were at Bhaktapur; I’ve glimpsed another one or two while we drive up and down the main roads, always in the distance and rapidly disappearing.  But today, while we waited for the shop owner to wrap up the paintings, I flipped through ECS, the leading expatriate magazine here — and glimpsed a blur shoot by my feet, from one open wall of the shop to the other (as I said, the store’s built into a corner — it actually only has two solid walls, and a pillar at the opposite corner to hold up the roof).

I blinked.  “I think that was a cat!  Or else a really large rat…”

My husband added, “It’s a white one!  And it’s over there!”

He pointed the opposite direction, and I was confused, until I watched the brown one I’d glimpsed go darting through with the white one after it.  And then it paused in the middle of the shop, and in a split second I wondered how the shopkeeper would respond to seeing a cat in the middle of his fine paintings store.

The cat froze, staring up at us with wild eyes.  In the same moment I noticed it wore a collar, and the shopkeeper glanced up from his wrapping and said, “Oh, that’s the neighbor’s cat.”

He made a sound between his teeth, a kind of “ttsshh” that I’ve heard other Nepalis make to various animals, dogs and cows and even goats; I’ve yet to figure out whether it’s supposed to be a shooing or summoning sound, though I suspect the former.

The cat started a little, then finished observing us and went to sulk on the front step of the shop, twitching its tail and staring out at the traffic with much the same mild interest as we must have displayed a moment before.  It was quite a pretty cat — a mottled golden brown, with sharp features, so that it reminded me of an Abyssinian.  It was quite skinny and on the small side, with yellow-orange-green-tinged eyes that were a little wild, but its evident ease with not just people, but strangers, proved it was happy enough.  When it discretely turned its head back enough to inspect us, I carefully blinked at it.

The cat’s eyes widened more, and it involuntarily jerked its head a bit; I’ve learned this is the cat equivalent of a start.  I read years ago that to blink at a cat is a way to tell it “I love you;” since then I’ve read other sources that interpret the gesture as sending more of a message of, “Hey, I can take my eyes off you for a moment; I trust you; and I’m not staring at you, planning to attack you; you can trust me, too.”

I lean toward the latter explanation as better depicting what goes through a cat’s mind.  After all, cats don’t need to blink to keep their eyes moist, and usually don’t, unlike humans; it makes sense they could develop meaning behind the simple movement.  And they clearly interpret the motion with a strong meaning; I’ve seen multiple cats start that exact same way when I first carefully blink at them, and I know my own pet cats always snuggle closer and purr louder, and start returning the slow blinks, when I blink at them.

In fact, the first time I ever intentional blinked at one of my pets, the same day I first read that the gesture could have meaning, I did it to an elderly cat I’d had for years.  And immediately her eyes widened, and her ears perked, in an expression that I can only describe as shock.  For a long moment.  And then, slowly, carefully, she relaxed and returned the blink — and then turned her face clear away.

So maybe that first book’s interpretation was right.  I’m not sure you can find a closer parallel in non-human relationships to the awkward moment when a usually distant family member suddenly says, “I love you.” and the other member, startled, replies with a careful, “I love you, too.”

In any case, today’s cat then glanced away from me, too.  It didn’t return the blink.  But its muscles relaxed some, and it stopped discreetly peering at us.  Instead it just cocked its ears toward the traffic, until it abruptly took off down an alley after something that caught its interest.

See?  I still like to write.  There’s plenty more to say about life in Kathmandu.  I have more pictures, too.  I intend to return to posting more regularly — then, hopefully, my novelist tendencies won’t spill over to my blog!

Novels are going well, by the way.  Six and a half still unpublished.  (Sigh)…

Nepali of the day:

mauph garnus:  I’m sorry!  Excuse me!

painting:  painting

pasal:  store

mahongo:  expensive

sasto:  inexpensive

dherai mahongo:  way too expensive

kati rupiyaa:  how many rupees?

yo kati rupiyaa ho?:  how much does this cost?

yo:  this

tyo:  that

Leaking Skylights and Escaping Kitties

[And here is my "final" post before I disappeared last week. The Internet was erratic that day, so I was able to write the text but not upload any photos. I decided to just save it and try to post it the next day. The next day, the Internet had disappeared. It was gone over a week. But you're up to speed on that story now, ne?]

Guess who apparently played on the roof again today?

So much for my declaration that kitties aren’t allowed on the terrace. Because our terrace also includes a skylight, and since the skylight was leaking a few weeks ago, we temporarily covered it with a tarp until we could have someone come to fix it.

The skylight is quite nice -- when it doesn't leak.

Granted, the leak wasn’t too bad. It only happened on the same day that this happened to the front yard:

I like having a pond in my yard, but this is ridiculous!

So, yes, sometimes the monsoon is worse than other times. But then the sun always returns “and dries up all the rain,” and you could never tell that our yard had been flooded for several hours.

The staircase directly under the skylight -- not what you want to have slippery!

Still, since the leak happened at all, and the skylight is positioned right over our pretty spiral staircase, we made sure to have it fixed. And Regina made sure to take advantage of the cracked door leading out onto the rooftop terrace, and my husband had to haul her off the roof — again — and bring her inside.

Aggravating little adventuresome kitty!

Regina, pretending to be innocent

[Since I wrote this post, the cats have had no further adventures on the roof. My husband did let Regina out with him a few days ago, but he watched her strictly and shouted at her if she looked like she wanted to jump onto the wall, and she actually behaved and stayed down. L'Orange went out, too. But she just stretched out under the solar panels, which she thinks is an awesome place to rest.]

(Almost) Flying Kitties

We have a turret on our house.

From below, it really looks like we could shoot arrows from it at need. Or maybe pour boiling oil?

I don’t really know why. It’s just sort of there — this entire house is very interesting, full of architectural quirks which make it quite different from the usual square on square on rectangle house.

The benefit to the turret is that my office here is a very pretty room — the rear wall billows out into a half-circle, with three tall windows facing the north. I’ve taken multiple pictures of The Pretty Mountain Hill through those windows.

I’m sure I’ll post more about my office later. At the moment, I want to underline that the house is three stories tall, with a nice front yard. The area around the house is fenced, too, so my husband thought it would be okay for the cats to occasionally go outside — under our supervision. Here is Regina in the interior alley to the side of, and beneath, the turret.

Do you see the floating pink? That's the turret again.

Well, of course this gave the cats ideas. Especially Regina — we just adopted her from a shelter last year, when she was already five years old. I wonder if her original people often let her go outside, because now that she has discovered she can sometimes go out here, she wants to do it all the time. She sits by the door and meows as if she expects us to open it for her.

And of course, finally, a few minutes after Sean came home today, I noticed he’d left the front door cracked. And Regina had disappeared. Repeated calling didn’t summon her, though good little L’Orange kept swirling around my ankles, peering up as if to say, “I’m right here, Mommy! You can stop calling me now!”

I sighed and ventured outside. Our night guard doesn’t speak much English, and I don’t yet know much Nepali, but I knew enough to walk up to him and ask, “Biraalo chaa?”

He nodded to the lawn, which he’d already been watching in some interest. I scanned it, and then he indicated straight down from where we stood. “Here.”

Sure enough, there was Regina, skulking against the wall behind some plants. I descended the short stairs from the driveway to the lawn, retrieved her, informed her she was a very bad kitty, and thanked the guard.

I also scolded my very bad husband who should pay more attention to shutting the door. But he usually does, and locks it, too, except now he’s suffering from the same flu I just recovered from, so I guess his thinking was a little hazy.  So I couldn’t scold him much.

Besides, Regina has had more exciting trips outside. Atop our three stories we have a large rooftop terrace, with yet another rooftop terrace stacked on it. And since before here we’d only ever lived in apartments, and those apartments had balconies, and the kitties had been allowed to sleep or play on the balconies as long as we were outside, too… when we moved here we initially thought the kitties could go out on the terraces  just as easily.

Our very first day outside, after both cats had been out for several minutes and seemed to have adjusted, and Sean had gone back in for a moment, and I’d started taking pictures… I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. Then turned and saw this:

Regina getting a bird's eye view of Kathmandu. Three stories up.

In the next second I was wailing, “Kitties do not belong on the roof! HOW DID YOU GET UP THERE?”

Maybe the architecture of the house is a bit too interesting. The lower rooftop terrace is surrounded by a waist-high railing, and in the front that railing touches part of the roof that arches over the front of the house. And Regina was already standing smack in the middle of the roof, too far for me to reach. I called her for a while, shouted at her for a while longer, then finally took the picture since I was holding the camera anyway and it was pretty clear she wasn’t going anywhere for the moment.

Then she started to teeter down the side of the roof, occasionally slipping a few inches. Not on the side of the roof toward the rooftop terrace, no. On the side with the three-story drop.

And then a giant crow arrived, and decided to sit at the very edge of the roof, and Regina stared, transfixed.

I pleaded with her to no avail. I shouted at the crow. Then screamed at it. It ruffled its feathers a bit, eyed me as if unimpressed, and Regina watched the movement. She crept around to enter a stalking position, and the crow — nearly the same size as her — watched idly.

Thank God she’d finally reached a part of the roof where I could lean over and — just barely — reach her. She didn’t like having me pull on her flea collar. She really didn’t like being throttled. But I think she would have liked slipping the final few inches, and three stories, to hard pavement, even less. I hauled her over the barrier and immediately dumped her inside.

The kitties are now banned from the rooftop terraces. At least until we erect a cage of chicken wire.

But now they’ve discovered the doors on the ground floor lead outside, too. Aaauuuggghhh!

Nepali of the day:

“Biraalo chha?” isn’t the most formal grammatical sentence, but I guessed it would, and it in fact did, convey enough of the notion of “Is there a cat out here?” “Chha” is the third-person form of “is” to describe location. If I would have just gone with my likely conclusion that she was outside somewhere, I could have asked, “Kahaan biraalo chha?” which literally means “Where is the cat?” But I still wasn’t certain she was even outside, so I just asked it to establish whether or not he’d seen Regina.

Flying Kitties

Okay, okay, time for a flashback. Because the further we get away from our travel here, the less likely it seems I will post about this, unless I do it now.

Since the site is called “KC Casey and Cats…” you may very well be wondering where the cats are. Well, that was what people wondered as we traveled here. Other people, before and since, asked how we could manage to get two cats halfway around the planet.

The answer — ironically, since we’re in Nepal — is Sherpa bags.

That is, soft-sided cat carriers small enough to slip under the seat on an airplane. Each kitty traveled in her own bag from DC all the way to Kathmandu.

Granted, they didn’t much like it. Regina started to make poor, lost, hopeless meows every time the plane accelerated. L’Orange just curled into a little ball, and decided to be very quiet, and shut her eyes very tight, and then maybe if she tried hard enough, she could make herself disappear.

They appreciated having a break overnight in Bangkok, to wander around our hotel room and NOT be in their bags. But when we carried those bags discretely under our arms, most people never guessed they held cats — unless, of course, the bag started to meow.

Sean amidst a pile of luggage in Bangkok. What's that he's opening?

L'Orange, not yet Suntala Rang.

And who's that peeking out? Why, I believe it's a tabby Regina!

Imagine approaching a security checkpoint, taking off your hat, taking off your shoes, removing your money belt, yanking out the plastic ziplock bag with your liquid items, pulling out the laptop for inspection… and THEN taking a deep breath, undoing the zipper, and reaching in to retrieve a frantic kitty and hug her tight as you walk through the metal detector. And then put her, and everything else, back where it belongs!

We each did it three times. The trip was a little stressful for us, too.

But it was worth it. We’re settled here, and so are the kitties.

At home in Kathmandu

By the way, the only Thai word I learned in Thailand itself: mau = cat

Nepali of the day:

suntala rang: orange-colored (suntala by itself means orange, the fruit; rang means color)

biralo(-haru): cat(s) (adding -haru to any noun makes it plural)

Jholaa-maa — in the bag (jholaa: bag; maa: inside of)

chha: is/are located

“Biraloharu jholaamaa chaa.” You figure it out!