A few photos of our cat Mischief and her kittens and trip back to the UK

Things we never imagined we’d be doing in Zambia

After a fun month in the UK we arrived back to find our cat ‘Mischief’ very heavily pregnant.

Lucy and Albert were ecstatic with the news. We were also excited but a little apprehensive!

Good friends of ours have had cats with 4 litters in the past so we sought their advice.

They confirmed – yes she was definitely pregnant, with 4 or 5 kittens and probably going to give birth this week! Can you imagine if we’d arrived back a week later?

  Google is most helpful and unhelpful for these sorts of things – helpful for all the advice about how to tell when your cat is going into labour and not helpful for readings list of why the mothers might reject their kittens!

 Thankfully our good friends in the know were also excited and more than happy to be called upon when labour began.

Last night that happened  - an excited Lucy ran into the kitchen (just as we’d sent the kids to bed) announcing Mischief was in labour. We walked into Lucy’s bedroom (a safe place) and found her in the box we’d made looking a little sorry for herself.  We watched for a bit, amazed at her body when the contractions came, then decided there was not a lot to do at this point and we should give her some peace. Lucy and Albert were not about to go back to bed and sleep while kittens were being born so I sat them in front of the laptop watching Youtube videos on ‘cats giving birth’. We called our friend and decided just to wait until she arrived. Albert went to the ‘toilet’ about 20 minutes later and came running back in saying ‘There’s a kitten on Lucy’s bed’. I thought he was joking and I’d find Lucy’s toy kitten on the bed but no there really was a kitten on Lucy’s bed – Mischief in our absence had obviously decided that Lucy’s bed was a lot more warm and comfortable than the box in the cupboard. As I quickly whipped off Lucy’s books, toys, pillows and duvet I watched Mischief ‘lick the kitten alive’ to sounds of high pitched ‘arrrrrrrrrrr’s’ from the kids.

 It was truly amazing to see nature’s instincts kick in. How Mischief knew what to do from the start and how this tiny little ball of fur managed to wriggle around until it had found the nipple.

Our friend turned up then – just in time to help and the next hour we watched as 3 more kittens were born.  Albert had the best ‘view’ and commented ‘It looks like a marble coming out’.

Our kids had some brilliant biology lessons last night!

 About 11pm we managed to change Lucy’s bed sheets and get mother and babies into the box so we could go to bed.  I did wonder if the kids would be able to fall asleep after the excitement of the night but then realised that Albert had already fallen asleep watching the kittens and Lucy was just happy to be sharing her bed with them!

 Most of this morning has been spent watching the kittens and deciding on names. They currently look like mini white tigers, as they are all stripy black and white. We have decided to keep 2 – one each for Lucy and Albert. Albert’s keeping the 4^th kitten, who is clearly the strongest and as it is the most black and was born at night, has decided to call it Midnight. Lucy wants the runt of the litter – the one we were a little worried about as it didn’t seem alive for a few minutes - it came out really fast and so Lucy has called it ‘Shooting star’ or just ‘Star’ for short.

So what an experience – to be able to watch a cat giving birth and help in the process – rubbing their faces to ensure they took a breath and cutting the umbilical cords when our cat was just too exhausted to do any more ‘work’  - watching our children overcome with joy at the thought of all these kitten living with us ……Never thought we’d be doing this in Zambia!

It certainly is an adventure!

Short but sweet highlights

I’m struggling to pick one thing to write as we have not been able to upload for a while and so much has happened since I last posted. … So this blog is a short but sweet ‘bullet point list’ of highlights from the last few months since our last post.

•  Jan – Em officially began work with Beyond Ourselves Zambia (BOZ) – starting with vision days and teacher training at the schools. She was encouraged by all the mini projects that had been successful over the previous year – classroom building, food programmes, getting fresh water at the schools and beautiful murals to name a few! Watching staff trying to cross the ‘crocodile infested river’ during team games was fun as well! We took the grade 7 pupils from each school on a mini trip and did some leadership training with a friend visiting from our church in the UK. 

•  February – February was the month for visitors – we had 2 teams visiting BOZ. Looking at the progress of the schools and helping with lesson observations. An early years specialist came out to support and advise the teachers at Janna school. – you can read the interview with the teacher at Janna here on the Beyond ourselves blog: http://www.beyondourselveszambia.blogspot.com At the end of February Em’s mum and Auntie Lynnie came to visit and spent the first week shopping for a sewing kit for each of the community schools and then spending their days mending school uniform – it was bright, hot and dusty but very rewarding work!

•  March - The beginning of March for us was a Simba school holiday and a trip to Victoria Falls with Em’s family. (Em’s dad arrived in Lusaka and we picked him en-route) What an amazing week that was – Victoria falls is awesome in the truest sense of the word! The Zambian people call it ‘The smoke that thunders’ and you see the ‘smoke’ and hear the roar way before you see the actual waterfall. This part of the country borders with Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana and after putting a foot in Zimbabwe and getting our ‘ZimZam’ photos we headed to Botswana for a mini safari. This was our favourite part of the holiday. As we arrived on the campsite, Auntie Lynnie jumped out of the car doing a silent scream that she could see an elephant and then we all got really excited as there were two elephants about 10 metres away from us! By the end of the evening we had seen about 100 elephants walk past our chalet, 4 giraffes, a herd of buffalo and a few impala – we couldn’t believe how amazing the place was! We spent our last day in Zambia’s capital city- Lusaka – where we shopped in a little craft village for wooden giraffes, woven baskets and the like. Malcolm’s and Lucy’s next 2 weeks were completely taken up with the school play Yee-Ha - a wild west extravaganza! And we were offered a new house with 3 bedrooms – on the next plot to Dan and Melissa! 

• April – Beyond Ourselves work in the schools slowly petered out this month as the children and teachers were immersed in tests. April is the end of the 1st term and a school holiday in Zambia – therefore a great time for moving house! We have spent most of the last few days slowing moving in and sorting things out like brown water and a leaking roof. But are so pleased with our lovely new house. The kids are enjoying living right next door to good friends and play outside constantly. We are all looking forward to another visit – yes another visit!! From Malcolm’s dad, Andrew who will be us on Wednesday 15th for a week and are hoping to take him away for a couple of days and of course a visit to a Zambian church. Andrew leaves the following Wednesday alongside Dan and Melissa and so we head into a new term with Em heading up BOZ on the ground, Lucy, Albert and Malcolm going into their final term at Simba and generally settling into our new home. 

 Please follow the link and read the Beyond Ourselves blog to find out more about the Charity we are working for out here in Zambia.
www.beyondourselves.co.uk

A New Year and happy Valentines day!

Oh dear - Our blog posts are about as sporadic as our internet at the moment! Beginning of Feb Lucy and Albert have a 'study week' this week so that means no afternoon activities and study time instead. Next week is exam week for them. They are doing well and love it here - The sports activities are so good. The weather is sunny for most of the time and even when it rains it is still warm so sports just continue. We went to another school at the weekend for an inter-school competition. They played Hockey, Cricket, Netball, Football, Water Polo and did a cross country race. Lucy came 3rd out of our girls and Albert 7th. We only won one hockey match but the the other school were really good and a boarding school so they practise every weekend. Malcolm was the only one who was miffed about the scores. The kids just enjoyed playing. Our church leader came out 2 weeks ago. We have a team arriving today, another lady arriving a week later on the Monday, Em's Mum and Auntie Lynnie arriving on the Friday and Em's Dad a week later- so Beyond Ourselves has been very busy with work and teams coming out. Em has been observing lessons, modelling lessons, doing some teacher training and (most fun of all) helping to decorate the classrooms with display boards, posters and the inflatable globes that Malc's mum brought out. (Photos will follow) We took out Grade 7 pupils for a day trip out and did some leadership training and team building games with them. We showed them how to teach the younger children games in the playground so the teachers get a break at break and the children learn some valuable leadership skills. One senior teacher even insisted on cooking Em a fried egg sandwich with a cup of tea the other day - all pretty much on what we would probably call a BBQ (Brazier) Emily Some teachers are insisting that I learn Bemba (the local language) and they managed to teach me how to say "I love you very much". I said that will be helpful tonight with my husband but doesn't do much for my teaching! Next week I'm learning how to say "Be quiet and sit down'. Malcolm I am in the middle of making up my grade 5 exams for my class - then I will be spending most of next week marking them, and then I'm writing reports so not that exciting. Today I took the children swimming while Em went for a 'Galentines Brunch' with the girls. Malcolm is also the director of the Upper primary school play, 'Yee-Ha'. Lucy has a speaking part and has been practising it and all the songs without fail every minute of the day! Albert is loving long division and generally anything Maths related at school. He also keeps showing off his newly learnt 'cursive' handwriting - which is actually quite impressive. They are both currently playing with the latest addition to our family - A black and white kitten we have named 'Mischief' which fits her very nicely. Cute when she trying to catch a bit of ribbon not so cute when she is pooing in the corner of our bathroom!