As the opening credits of Catwoman started to roll, I laughed at the ways fate decided to show itself. I chose the movie without even thinking, and the opening images of cats and women prove the sneaking suspicion that has been creeping up on me for the last few weeks. I am officially transformed from the past, regular Maya into Maya, the Cat Lady of Namatakula.

It all started with some rat problems. The first house I lived in here in the village had a major infestation. Each night I moved the soap out of my shower and put it in a safe place. Why? Because if I had left it, the rat gang would move in and steal my soap. At that point, I was averaging about 2 bars of soap a month. And no, this was not because I had had a revelation about cleanliness-it was because of the thieves. Well, I moved into my new house and thought to myself, “Here's my chance to start anew and be super clean to avoid rat infestation. I am tired of breaking the bank on soap.” Unfortunately, no amount of cleanliness can keep those pests away. I wasn't sure what they were eating (the rats on this side of the village are not soap-eaters), but they came in droves.

Suddenly I found myself living in a rat's nest. I returned from a weekend away to find that they had been living in my underwear box. In their nightly gallivanting, they knocked spices and sponges off the shelves. I would wake up to hear them racing around the floor and walls near my bed. And then, the final straw. One night while I was sleeping, in a complete and utter invasion of my space, one took a big chomp on my finger in the middle of the night! In the morning, I awoke to find blood on my sheets and bite marks on my finger nail. Outraged, but to much of a wimp to go the route of the rat trap, I went for a two pronged approach, rat poison and a cat to do the dirty work. I quickly made a trip to the SPCA in Suva and, with the help of a few character judges, picked out the kitten who looked most like he would develop into a rat killer.

And so began my life as a Cat Lady. The little guy was an adorable little fluff of fur. Having him around (or maybe it was the poison) worked like a charm-he provided hours of entertainment and there were no rats anywhere near the house. Of course, he had a slight flea problem, and had mistaken the area under my bed as his bathroom, but these were small problems we worked through. He loved chasing anything that moved, be it my mosquito net or a mosquito, which I saw as a great sign for his future prowess as a ratter. I gave the wild little guy the name Riva (pronounced reeva), which is the Fijian word for crazy. It turns out, however, that unlike crazy, the word riva doesn't ever have a good connotation. You can't say, for example, “she's so riva! I love hanging out with that girl.” People who are riva go to the mental institution in Fiji. Moreover, riva also means mentally handicapped. (this is why that phrase doesn't work. Try it. “she's so mentally handicapped! I love hanging out with that girl.” Nope.) Oops. Luckily, Riva doesn't understand Fijian, and so doesn't know that I gave him a name that labels him as a resident of the mental institution.

Fast forward a month or two. Riva is starting to look like a real, grown up cat and understand the concept of a litter box. He loves to play. Life is great. One day I walk down to the beach to get some sand for his box and a crowd of little kids ran up to me. They were all speaking at once trying to tell me something about cats and a box and the beach and abandoned and.... Once I got them to slow down and tell me what the problem was, I found out that someone had abandoned two very young kittens in a box on the beach. Being the one crazy white person in the village who buys food for my cat and keeps him inside, they figured I was the perfect person to rescue the little guys. So, I took them in. I had to. I couldn't, in front of all of these sensitive, impressionable kids, leave the kittens there in a box where they would surely be taken away by the high tide and eaten by sharks. Or at the least be eaten by rats. So, Maya, the savior; the wonderful Peace Corps volunteer who is full of love (as the kids told me), took the two one-and-a-half week old kittens into her 16ft X 20ft home.

Thinking back, being labeled as someone who abandons cats may not have been such a bad thing. The two little cows were not yet old enough to eat on their own. So, every few hours I put a bit of milk into half of a contact solution bottle that was serving as a bottle. They weren't really very easy to feed, having claws and all, and so soon my house took on the smell of the old milk that had been spilled everywhere. I also realized that soap costs much less than milk in this country. Mornings were no longer relaxing because my new alarm clock was the obnoxiously loud mewing of the starving kittens. This alarm clock went off at all hours of the day and night. My social life was affected because people in the village were kind of afraid of the little kittens that stumbled all over the place and clawed their feet to look for food. If I went out somewhere, I had to make sure I wasn't gone too long so that I could get home to feed the kittens. They, like Riva when he first came to my house, could also not control where they peed. Nothing is quite so enjoyable as going to wipe your feet on the welcome mat and finding it already wet. They weren't even cute-they looked like rats and couldn't even really walk. What's more, they made Riva even crazier. Since their entrance to the house, he started galloping around the house, going full speed from one side to the other. If it wasn't the kittens that were keeping me awake, it was Riva's running. Thus my descent into Cat Lady-dom. One lady, three cats, very small house.

Things have gotten a little better lately. They have finally figured out how to eat on their own, however buying the food is still breaking the bank. They've quieted down a bit and mornings are a going a little smoother. Riva has taken to the little kittens (who I'm realizing might be females, which presents a whole other set of problems), and now sees them as great toys. He loves to, mid-gallop, tackle the kittens. This is hilarious to watch, but I do kind of worry about them developing some sort of complex or major injury. He also fills some of the mother roles that I can't by cleaning them and snuggling with them while they sleep. They are starting to get the walking thing, and starting to look cute, however they still haven't grasped the concept of the litter box and have they have fleas, two things which are causing major problems in our relationship. I am really hoping to hand them off to other families in the village. And I'm tired of cleaning up their poop. I am trying to talk up the fact that my house has been rat free since I got a cat, and prove how cute and fun the kittens are in hopes that this will help to unload them faster. My house is just too small to handle three cats. Or maybe I'll just give one away...two cats might not be too bad...