KalahariLog

Our cat, Cubbie, is a constant source of grief and joy. One of the later worries is over the poisoned pet food that affected 30,000-50,000 pets around the world. Sure enough, Hill's Foods is one of the few options in Botswana. And when your cat vomits, you start worrying. It makes me wonder about the wonders of globalization; does wheat gluten from China (apparently Chinese wheat gluten was contaminated with melamine, a chemical used in fertilizers) really need to shipped around the world for the purpose of making pet food? For that matter, why are we buying pet food that is American made, with Chinese ingredients, from a South African chain store in Botswana?

When it is not poisoned pet food, it's worrying about the vets. What do we know about the vet that we take her too? When Cubbie had stomach problems a few months ago, our vet prescribed a couple of pills. One of the pills caused the cat to gag and was virtually impossible to make her take it; we tried putting it in food or stuffing it down her throat to no avail. A minute of googling quickly uncovered hundreds of pages about this pill and how difficult it is to get pets to swallow it because of its unusually nasty taste. Of course there is an easy solution -- just get a gell-cap and put the foul-tasting pill inside it. You would think that any experienced vet would know that and tell you about it, no? Then our nice elderly vet in Tucson, turned out to be not so nice either. He was involved in a scheme where he imported kangaroo skins from Australia for baseball gloves. Not exactly loving of animals, big and small. These days you can find reviews and rankings for nearly everything: books at Amazon, hotels at Tripadvisor, Universities at US News and World Report, cameras, vacuum cleaners and cars at Consumer Reports. But for the things that really count, like vets and doctors, no such luck. It is all word of mouth, and personal recommendation and sometimes a well-liked friendly old gentleman turns out to be in the business of skinning Australian marsupials.

It doesn't help that our cat is also "emotionally traumatized" to quote the kangaroo-skinner vet. We got her from the humane society a few years ago and she was already 5-6 years old. It took weeks of hiding under sofas, in closets, or in cupboard (from where she probably got her name) before she got used to us. Still, every now and then she disappears for hours, and this is no small feat for an in-door cat in a smallish house. When we travel it is always a worry trying to find a house-sitter or cat-sitter. Many of them never even see the cat. A colleague in Arizona has looked after her for 3 weeks and never actually seen her. A colleague in Botswana has looked after her for 2 weeks with the same number of sightings. What is worse is that Cubbie suffers from separation anxiety and it takes her weeks to recover after we have been away. It took more like a month to get back to normal (which would be considered abnormally skittish and anxious in most other pets) after we brought her with us to Africa. I know, we probably shouldn't have done it but giving her to friends to take care of for a year didn't seem right.

The biggest problem facing us now is bringing the cat back to Arizona. Paperwork and fees are just the tip of the iceberg. As on the way to Africa, on the way back we can't take Cubbie in the cabin on all the flights. South Africa does not allow pets arriving or departing in the cabin of any flight. But this is not the half of it, as the Gaborone to Johannesburg leg of the trip doesn't allows pets neither in the cabin nor as cargo. Supposing we somehow get the cat to Johannesburg, there are other things to worry about. No pets can go through the UK at all. The EU imposes a 72 hour quarantine. It doesn't help that the weather is heating up in the US where most airlines refuse to take pets as cargo when the temperature is high. There are several South African companies that claim to be able to deliver her with a combination of car travel, and plane trips as cargo but this seems to take at least 5 days and costs several thousand dollars. And who is to say that these people know what they are doing?