a kitten rescue in bali

Posted on | March 2, 2010 | 7 Comments

last saturday night, six of us piled into the kijang and headed the 5 km into ubud for dinner.
the way lies through two small villages with plenty of rice paddies in between.
there is no street lighting.
the road is very narrow and twisting, so nobody goes very fast.
i was sitting in the front and even without glasses, i clearly saw a small white bundle in the middle of the road.
the driver slowed and as we approached, it uncurled itself and scampered to the long grass at the side of the road.
it was a very small grey and white kitten.

we had dinner, then two hours later we made our way home.
this time, i saw a small white thing on the side of the road, in the darkness, even with my terrible eyesight.
t took me a few seconds to realise it was the kitten.
it took me a few more seconds to realise there were no houses close by.
it took me a few more seconds to figure it was a tiny kitten, alone out there in the rice paddies.
by this time, we were pretty much back at our villa.
i walked into our room and was deep into some serious wailing and bawling, because i figured that little cat had absolutely no chance out there.

so, my wonderful husband says: hey, what’s up?
i sobbed out : the kitten.
he said: i’ll go back and get the kitten, don’t you worry.
so i gave him a lombok basket with a lid from our room, described where i had seen the kitten, and he went out and hailed down one of the guys with a motorbike and off they went.
half way there, they ran out of fuel.
guy number one calls a friend.
then a third guy who is coming from the opposite direction, stops and asks whassup.
he gives his bike to guy number one and maurice and off they go again.
they fish the kitten out of a watery ditch beneath the palm trees, where it has skittered off to as they approached, stuff it into the basket, then return on the bike.
then the second guy shows up with fuel, which maurice has to fight them to pay for (two bucks and nobody would take it until he insisted) and they all get home again.
upon arrival at the villa, he was immediately christened “steve” by miss djax, amongst much hilarity.
my husband is a hero.
sometimes, he is just so incredibly can-do and practical, when all i can do is cry and wring my hands.

we put the wet kitten into our big deep steep sided bathtub, with the basket to hide behind and another basket to hide in.
i wiped his eyes and nose, but he wasn’t happy about it.
i took 3 fleas off him and that looked to be about all there were.
we called for a warm scrambled egg and we fed him little bits of it through the night. he was one hungry cat.
in the morning he had bacon and eggs and the villa staff brought him a large bird cage to live in.
by 9am he had crawled out of the bird cage and out of the bathtub and was nowhere to be found.
we had closed doors to keep him safe, so i knew he wouldn’t be too far.
eventually i ran him to earth in our wardrobe, resting on some new white linen silk pants.
as the day wore on, he burrowed beneath them so he was sandwiched and cosy.

in the afternoon, we took him to BAWA, the bali dog shelter.
turns out they look after cats too! who knew?
we had already been there earlier in the week to give them a donation…..under instructions from our friend miss kia in seattle….so they were the first place we thought of.

we greased steve’s way in with another five hundred thousand rupiah.
it will be enough to treat him and feed him until he is adopted.
they had vaccinated him, wormed him, cleaned his eyes, nose, ears, identified him as a 5 week old boy, and taken his temperature; all before we had finished filling out our donation receipt details.

we waved him good bye and left feeling as though things have turned around for the poor little midget.

here he is:

and here he is on my clothing….which is being disinfected in a bangkok laundry as i type:

and here is the gorgeous marmalade who lives at the bali botanica spa, posing on an emerald green cushion:

BAWA bali is funded by donations, so if you’ve got some paypal money jingling around, please consider them.
they are doing a great job there and it is uphill work….but in the 16 years i have been visiting bali, the positive change in attitude to dogs and cats is palpable.
and the change in the health and the numbers of the street dogs is also palpable.
i’ve committed to a regular monthly paypal payment for them.
it isn’t hundreds of dollars, but nobody can stretch a dollar like these guys.
a little goes a long long way.
and their tag line is hilarious: eat spay love.

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