Our House is a very very very fine house

This is my cat. She apparently came with the bungalow that I'm staying in. I wasn't here 5 minutes last Friday night when she came mewing at my door, begging to be let in. I did, of course. She's slept with me every night since, helping keep me warm. I'm sure she has an official name, but I've been calling her Black Beauty--or BB for short. Where else do you get a cat with a room?

Some anxious news today: the baby baboon isn't doing well. He was born to a mother who was (they thought) even too young to be sterilized, premature. The mother didn't know what to do with him, and he was failing. So Marieta went in a took the baby to save it. The mother--once Marieta's baby and a baby I helped grow named Coco--handed her over willingly.

This morning I went into Marieta's kitchen and held the baby boy for an hour, bottle fed him, and talked to him, but he was weak and having diarrhea. Marieta took him to the vet today in Gobabis--about an hour away. She's still gone so I don't know what the vet said.

One of the things that I love about Marieta is that she believes in the individual life of each animal. Sure, she's believes in the survival of the species, but she also believes that this little one, this individual life, has a right to go on. So I don't know what you believe, but I'm just asking you to think positive thoughts, pray, hope--whatever--that this little boy whom I held and kissesd this morning, survives. His eyes are so human.

And so as not to end on an anxious note, while I've been writing this--at a table outside the lapa in the setting sun--a half-grown warthog has been rooting around me, sort of sucking on my jeans and trying to get me to pet him (perhaps the least attractive animal alive). Right now I think he's sucking on my foot. Hilarious. You just never know here at Harnas. BB