“I miss my Boomie”, Maui says. Boomie is the nickname for her cat. I have also heard her cat referred to as Kitty
Boom Boom, Fat Cat and, though I’m sure she’ll deny this, Boo. At first I think it’s just a random statement
but then I hear the sobs and I realize that she needs a hug. I can’t imagine it’s easy moving away from
home for the first time ever and having it be the other side of the planet just
compounds matters. I have had a hard
time relating to this because I haven’t lived in my home town for longer than a
few months since my first year of college, and when I left, I was happy. The most I can do is sympathize. It isn’t something I can empathize with.
“Boomie is fine”, I say, “I’m sure your father is taking
really good care of her.”
Maui continues to sob
and starts kicking the tears in overdrive when she says, “But what if she
misses me? What if she thinks I
abandoned her?”
“That’s the last thing on her mind. She is having a blast without you”, I tell
her, “She has a boyfriend and she sees him every day now. In fact she has two. It’s been taking up most of her time. She misses you but without you there she has
been able to get out and have a good time without being smushed, chased or
snuggled with every five minutes by a human. “
“But who is going to spank her butt and squeeze her face and
lay on top of her?”
“One or both of those boy cats will fulfill those needs, I’m
sure.”
Besides missing her animal Maui has adjusted to her life in
Kuwait exceptionally well. I think the
fact that she knows it is temporary helps.
It also helps that she has a friend in the building. I think the one single factor that has made
the biggest difference, however, is the fact that after almost two years of
living in Kuwait, I finally got my license the week before she flew in, purely
by coincidence. With this, we have been
able to explore various parts of Kuwait on our own and sometimes it almost
feels like a real life out here.
Like this past weekend for instance, my coworker Giovanni
wrote down directions for this Japanese store that sells a wide array of random
thingamabobs from all over the orient at an affordable rate. Even though I work nights, we decided we
would wake up early and venture out to the store during the daytime, as well the
camel races afterwards.
It ended up being much more of an adventure than we had
planned. The area near the store,
according to the directions, was by the City Center which included a bowling
alley hundreds of market-like stores and a children’s Chuck E Cheese-esque
arcade. We scoped it out a little the
night before but could not pinpoint the exact location. We figured we’d have better luck in the
daytime. To avoid paying the parking
fees, and also to be situated closer to where the store’s entrance should be,
we parked in a parking lot that connected to the City Center Parking lot and
walked the extra fifty yards to the perimeter.
We are both extremely hungry and decide that we will eat
something fast in the shopping center before venture into the Japanese
store. We are walking through the gate
to the other parking lot when Maui does a little skip hop to catch up with me
and grabs my arm. She whispers, “I smell
animals. That must be where they have
the petting zoo”. I take a big breath
in and smell hay and agree that there may be some type of animal petting or
feeding area nearby. As we continue
walking, the smell gets stronger and Maui points to a building to the right and
says, “There they are in that building.
I can hear the chickens laughing”.
I look up and see the word “Slaughterhouse” written on a sign by the building
and look at Maui. Her mouth is open as
if her jaw had just had just been weighed down with marbles.
“Fucking Giovanni. I
wonder if this was a joke of his, sending us to a slaughterhouse”.
This is when I realize that Maui hadn’t realized what the
building was. This was a poor
observation, on my part, of her reaction to the building. She hadn’t read the sign and was paying
attention to the animals that could be seen outside the building instead. My guess is, she was trying to figure out how
one would go about entering the facility for petting sessions. Upon
hearing the word “slaughterhouse”, there is a distinct change in her facial expression
and demeanor. I remember it in slow
motion, her head slowly turning towards me as her curious stare becomes the sad
eyes I saw that morning when she was crying over the cat she missed. The laughs from the chickens seem louder than
ever at the realization that they are the dying screams of an animal about to
be executed and all I can do is curse the sky at Giovanni’s clever manipulation
but deep down, I want to laugh.
We don’t ever make it to the Japanese store but we do manage
to find the camel races in the deserted desert where the Bedouins thrive. The camels aren’t ridden by people the way
horses are in the states. There is a
machine that is affixed to their hump that whips them repeatedly as well as a
stable of cars beeping their horns next to them to keep them running . Maui felt bad for the camels being whipped to
run the race. I was still traumatized by
the screaming chickens and the house of death we walked past in search of
Japanese delights.
