Day 206 - Sheikha and Sharifa

Sheikha

Once I met Alex, we decided we needed something to make my house more like home. We decided a cat would do. Alex knew someone who had a cat that had just given birth to kittens, so we picked one out - an all black female half-Siamese we named Sheikha, the feminine form of Sheikh, a common title in Arab countries.

Sheikha moved in with us and settled nicely. For a few weeks, that is.

Three weeks later, I was out shopping with Gloria, the ambassador's secretary. When we returned, there was an orange crate on Gloria's steps. An unexplained package on a doorstep set off alarms in both of us, but we stopped worrying when we saw a small white paw sticking through one of the holes in the top. When we got to Gloria's door, we saw a tiny white desert cat in the crate. Since Gloria already had two adult cats, she said she couldn't take in the kitten. I took her home. We named her Sharifa, the feminine form of Sharif, another Arab title.

Sharifa in a box

We learned later that the guards at the entrance to our housing compound had been taking care of Sharifa.  Housing compounds were frequent dumping grounds for litters of kittens, although Sharifa didn't look like other cats. We called her a desert cat because her head was very small, her ears were too large for her head, and her rear haunches were huge. When she ran, her back legs got ahead of her front legs. When the guards realized they couldn't continue taking care of the kitten, they asked some of the boys on the compound to find a new home for her. One of the boys was PJ, son of my embassy colleague Pete. Whether they asked anyone else on the compound I don't know. But it wasn't a surprise they concluded Gloria would take in another cat since she already had two.

Sheikha and Sharifa with one of their toys - a rubber band

Sheikha wasn't pleased to have to share her space with Sharifa, but Sharifa was determined. Sheikha would try to keep her distance from Sharifa, but Sharifa would would prance right over to Sheikha and jump on top of her. Sheikha was bigger, but Sharifa always came out on top.

There were a few other reasons we considered Sharifa a desert cat. She seemed to create her own toys out of whatever she found. And what she seemed to prefer were raisin-shaped, dried up turds which she batted all around the house as if she were dribbling a soccer ball. When we found them, we threw them away, naturally. So she started hiding them under the throw rug in the kitchen. But the silly cat didn't catch on that when she took them out to play while we were home, we could hear her toys rolling around on the tile floor in the kitchen. And we threw them away again.

Sharifa leaping higher than her height

She was also incredibly athletic. In contrast, Sheikha seemed lazy, satisfied to sit in a corner and wait for entertainment to come her way. Sharifa, on the other had, had those huge haunches so she could leap into the air to catch bugs or whatever we tossed up to catch her attention. A helium-filled balloon with a film box tied as ballast so that the balloon wouldn't just rise to and rest on the ceiling was hours of entertainment for both Sharifa and anyone else in the room with her.

When we left Doha, we had to send Sheikha and Sharifa to England since Barbados, my next assignment, required dogs and cats spend six months in quarantine in England before they could be imported into Barbados. We sent them off to England as kittens and collected them six months later as cats.