Cats of the Libyan Revolution

The war is over, Libya has been liberated, life is slowly returning to normal. We see less and less freedom fighters on the roads, fewer guns, and a reduced number of checkpoints. 

As I was going to work one day last week the traffic slowed to a crawl and I craned my neck around the truck in front of me, trying to see what was holding up traffic but there was no checkpoint in sight. The traffic continued at a crawl. Suddenly I spotted what was holding us up. In the very centre of the road was a tiny little kitten. Drivers were trying to avoid hitting the poor little thing. As I pulled up next to it I stopped and said to my daughter 'Open the door carefully and go pick it up'. 

My daughter got back in the car with the kitten and exclaimed 'Mom it's so dirty! And her eye is infected' 'Don't worry. We'll get her sorted out later when we get home' I replied. 'Is it male or female?' I asked. 'It's a girl. What should we name her?' my daughter asked and then she started listing off all the names she could think of. 'Wait and see, we'll find a name' I replied.

I only had a few hours of work, my daughter looked after the kitten while she waited for me to finish. When we got home I told my daughter to feed the kitten and let it get used to our house. 

Later I had a look at her. She was filthy and her eye was infected, pus matting all the fur on her face, her eye was sealed shut. I gave her a warm bath, and gently wiped away the dried pus with a clean soft cloth. Then I dried her under the warm air of the hairdryer set to the lowest speed and temperature. Her eye was swollen and I wasn't sure if she even had an eye. I got out some eye ointment that I had in the medicine cabinet and applied it gently. She was so patient and sweet - never made a single complaint.

Our newest addition after we rescued her and gave her a bath.

She's just a little 'ole alleycat. I decided to name her Zenga, the Libyan word for alley which was also made famous during the Libyan uprising - Zenga Zenga! Dar dar! She's the last of the cats we aquired during the Libyan revolution. It seemed fitting to give her the name Zenga. 

Last March at the beginning of NATO's intervention in Libya and 'Odyssey Dawn', the code name for the US operation in Libya, our cat Dawn gave birth to three kittens during a particularly scary air raid; one calico we named Odyssey - my son later gave her to one of the neighbours, a pure black one  named Layla - she later dissapeared, possibly eaten by an owl, and the last a typical striped male that we named Homer after the Greek writer of the famous epic poem The Odyssey.   

Homer's favourite hobby is knocking over coffee mugs. He manages to break a few every week. In the morning he sleeps on my bed where he enjoys the morning sunbeams. The rest of the day he can be found sleeping on top of my computer or draped across the top of the keyboard. 

Homer resting in the sunbeams.