Tongan Update, 13 December 2007, Cat Capers
John and I were puttering around our apartment the other day when we heard the mewing sounds of a cat in distress. After hitting the pig while on inspections last week, we set out to rescue THIS cat. We walked all around our complex and could not find the feline. So we thought all must be OK and went back to the apartment. Again we heard the meowing, and again we went into “search and rescue mode.” No cat!! Once again we returned to the apartment only to hear the same desperate sounds again. Enough was enough…we weren’t going crazy because some of the young Elders heard it too, and decided they would help us with the hunt.
We finally decided the noise was coming from the attic. One of our courageous Elders (Elder Olsen) climbed the ladder and slithered around in the crawl space, with a flashlight in hand, and found the cat. But the cat was too quick for him and escaped out of the Elder’s grasp.
So this cat didn’t need to be rescued after all, and John and I went back to a nice, quiet apartment. Well, it was quiet for about an hour then the meowing started up in stereo. As we listened, we realized there were two cats singing a duet. A second Elder climbs up the ladder, crawls around, and grabs one cat. It turned out to be a baby kitten with its eyes barely opened.
Now we had to use some cat psychology. The plan…we’d put the baby in a box on the back porch, the mother would come rescue it, and the family would find a home someplace else, and everyone would live happy ever after.
The baby in the attic quit crying, but the baby in the box meowed and meowed. No mother came to help her. Finally at 4:00 in the morning, we placed the crying kitten back into the attic with its sibling. We decided we would put up with the noise in the attic, and let the mother take care of her kittens. And that is what she has done! It’s amazing…we can hear them a little bit, but nothing like all the distressed crying there had been earlier. Thinking like a cat, we believe the mother cat had left her babies too long and they had gotten hungry. She must not be leaving them as long now because they are very quiet. The next interesting problem is—how is the mom going to get those little kittens out of the attic and down onto the ground? It seems like a long ways down. Oh, the life of another animal in Tonga…yikes!
To get into the Christmas Spirit, the APs, Office Elders ( Olsen, Finau, Jones, Hikila), and we decided to put up and decorate the Mission Office tree, and hang a few lights. We couldn’t do the decorations without a little food in our stomachs first. So John fixed French toast. It was a hit. The Elders went back for seconds…thirds… and fourths.
Our experience was no different than at home. Those little lights are the pits. John and two elders spent a lot of time trying to make the lights work. Eventually, two sets of lights were merged into one set.
In the court yard, all the plugs that are low are for 240v power. With the merging of two strands of light into one, we had lights for the tree. Just one strand instead of two, but this set of lights came with a transformer so we were ok.
Next problem-- we have six sets of lights, but they run on 110v power. The plugs are 240v. What to do? Well, we looked and looked for additional plugs. We found a plug for 110 power. We were excited, but the plug had no power, so John traced the power from the plug and found that it went into the kitchen, down the wall, and onto the top of the cabinet. What was on the cabinet top?-- a cord that we could plug into a transformer sitting on the kitchen countertop. Bingo, we had 110 power to plug the lights into. Now we had power to hang light around the roof edge of the inner court yard.
We started to unpack the six boxes of lights. Someone had written “don’t work” on the boxes. Why keep the lights if they don’t work? We found a small transformer and plugged them in. They all worked. What’s the problem? Well, each set of lights worked, but none of them had plugs on the end in order to link another set to one another. Now we have six sets of lights that can’t be linked together, and we have only one plug. So, what do you do? We strung one set of lights in one direction and another set in another direction. We were finished with hanging lights.
Diane placed some small trees and a manger set in our offices. In her office, the tree was complete with small decorations and decorative coverings around the bases. The manger set was complete with colorful boxes and trimming. I went into my office and on the file cabinet was a tree. It was bare. No trimmings, just a tree. The elders and I went back into her office then back to mine. I asked them, “Do you notice the difference in the decorations”. We just laughed. It was so funny to us…Beautiful decorations in one room and a tree in the other. Well, we’ll have to do something about this problem, tomorrow.
We hope you’re having fun getting your Christmas decorations up too.
‘Ofa atu, John and Diane
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