cannibal kittens

Happy November to all! Hope everyone had a fun Halloween weekend -- mine was pretty tame, comparatively speaking. We were supposed to be going to a Halloween party at the American Embassy being hosted by the Marines (we have gone to a few other Marine parties and are friends with a few of them, so it's usually a good bet). Unfortunately, every other expat in Cairo under the age of 35 had the same idea as us, and there were MASSIVE lines to get in. So we took our costumed selves (there were like 15 of us) to El Mojito, a bar/lounge we go to pretty regularly. It was not an official Halloween party per se, but there were plenty of people in costume, so we had fun.

This is not the first time I have spent Halloween abroad, and it was just as underwhelming this time around. I don't know, I think that even though people try elsewhere, America is the only place where enough people have embraced Halloween (and its inherent tackiness) with enough enthusiasm to make it truly awesome. I have always loved Halloween; I love special showings of Nightmare Before Christmas and cheesy decorations and haunted warehouses next to Lake Michigan (which is what I did last year!). I mean, I had fun in Spain/London and in Egypt, but it's just not the same. OK, gripe over.

But something truly terrifying (not really, I just needed a segue) did happen this weeked. Cairo has a big cat problem -- they are just everywhere, dirty, starving, meowing, etc. One managed to find its way up to my floor (it climbed 14 flights of stairs, so that's true dedication), where it proceeded to sit in front of every door on my floor (there are four, and all face each other in a square) and just meow pathetically for extended periods of time. We felt bad, but giving it food is like giving it an invitation to stay, which none of us want. A few days ago we realized that part of the source of the meowing was that our dirty stray cat had 4 dirty stray kittens. Seriously, they can fit in the palm of my hand (if I tried to pick one up, which I absolutely have not done) and are tiny and so adorable. And they sat in the hall (vestibule?) and just meowed like crazy.

But yesterday we opened the door and found that the tiny adorable kittens had killed one of their brothers and sisters and were in the middle of EATING it. So disgusting. There were...parts...scattered around (paws, a head, other grossness). I slept through the initial sightings, but luckily A1 and A2 pointed it out to me later, lest I be spared the image of a dead cat's head becoming dinner in our hallway. Thanks, guys! Anyway, the bowab came and cleaned it up and shooed the remaining cats away, so that's good at least. But I think that might have taken care of any remaining desire I had to have pets.