How to Catch a Cat in Mozambique

Living in a reed house in the middle of a coconut forest seems to make us perfect targets for rats who are looking for nice squatting grounds. Things really got out of control when they moved past just nibbling on any morsel of food they could find and moved on to chewing absolutely anything in sight, including erasers, candles, and toothpaste. One especially well-fed rat let his guard down and came out during daylight hours, only to meet his demise in Jonathan and a kitchen knife – you’ll have to talk to him for the full story as I am actively trying to forget that I witnessed the whole event. Although no matter what we did they always seemed to keep coming back. So you can imagine our delight when we went to visit our friend Drew and discovered the trash pit behind his house was full of kittens (yes, I do realize how ridiculous that sounds that we were delighted by this, but, this is Mozambique).  The only problem was how to catch one. We tried enlisting the neighborhood kids, offering a bounty of a coke and packet of cookies for anyone who could catch us one – we thought they might have a better method than we could think of, but their only strategy including running in circles around the pile. Unfortunately this didn’t result in a kitten for us, but it did provide us endless entertainment. If only the kids had been raised on 1960’s cartoons the way we had, they obviously would have known that you just have to set up a trap box over a plate of tuna, and then hide around the corner with the other end of the rope. Our plan worked like a dream, and in less than 15 minutes we had caught our little kitten. We named him Peeta Mellark because we were reading the Hunger Games at the time, and had been talking about it all weekend with Drew, a 7th grade teacher back home. He had to travel the last 2.5 hours home with us in a plastic picnic basket, but life has been far less-traumatic since arriving here. He never leaves our yard, something I’ve never known another cat to do, and every once in a while he’ll even hang out with the dog. And the best part – we’re now rat-free.