Scamp the Stray ... nay Pampered Puss

When we moved to Saudi Arabia at the end of last September (2008) we were certainly 'shell shocked' to say the least to be in a very very strange country with totally alien life styles and religious orientation ie., being woken up every morning by the call to prayer at 4am, to begin with and the last one at 7pm (6 in all). I couldn't sleep cos I knew I'd be woken up at 4am and then unable to get back to sleep as I'd have to get up at 6am to get the kids ready for school start at 7am. Then finding the weekend is a Thursday & Friday (our Sat & Sun) so I didn't know which day of the week it was and still have trouble remembering...I'm not the only one, most people still have trouble with that one.

Then there was the heat... apparently we arrived in winter time !!! But it turned out the be a wonderful winter cos it cooled down pretty fast within a couple of weeks and it was lovely....It's heating up rather a lot again and finding walking about town in an abaya rather tiringly hot. I never really was one for malls but they are air conditioned so I'll start to do my shopping around in them fairly soon just for a change of scenery from the compound.

Then there's the matawa... actually I've not seen one but lots of the girls say they have been told to cover their hair and has a few incidents... lucky me so far, but I'm sure I'll have my day sometime especially during Ramadam when things become very religiously strict for all women including us ex-pats to adhere to the country's rules. There will be no drinking or eating in public during the daylight hours, which doesn't really affect us unless we want to go out in the searing heat of the day which I'm not likely to do but it would pose a problem in the malls as I did tend to drink bottles of water during the start of winter so can't imagine going without during the heat of summer !

Then there's the lonliness of not having a pet.. have always had a cat or something and was despirate to get a cat. I had been told that I'd have no problem getting one of the strays on the compound and there I was tempting everyone I saw then had the compounds strays all despirate for food and a home. Scamp was the winner, he just barged past all the 'scaredy cats' who were taking too long to get over their shyness and walk right on in. That was it, he was ours ! The best trained cat ever ! No weeing or pooping anywhere, no need for a litter tray, and fabulous with the kids. We all love him very much. So much so that I've now got to try to get a job out here so that we can afford to take him back to the UK at the end of our stay here.We still love Silver back in the UK, but he's never been much of a social cat and never really learned the art of getting it all in the tray or if he saw a plastic bag or even a pair of shoes he couldn't resist a little (or even a lot) of weeing ! Hubby has even worn a pair of shoes to work thinking he could smell cats all day and then he took them off and 'just knew' Silver had left him a present at some stage in them ! Still he's old now and the in-laws are looking after him and getting used to his peculiar ways, and even they love him so he must have something going for him although I'm finding that difficult at the moment after finding the 'perfect stray cat'.
As you can see Scamp has decided that he much prefers the life of a pampered cat to a compound stray but he has suffered for his preference. He was solid muscle when he first came to us, now he's just a 'saggy old' oh that's 'bag puss' isn't it... well he's getting there.

Silver wants the last word !