We truly miss you!
We were looking forward to living together with Orapa for a longer period of time. Since cats can easily live to be fifteen years old or older, I expected him to be at my funeral and not the other way around. But firstly, things turn out differently, and secondly, then you think.
On November 2nd, 2023, we met the three-week-old kitten in Orapa, (hence his name) in Botswana. It was crawling around our legs alone and looking for his mother, hungry and thirsty, as we sought permission to visit the diamond mine. Since no one cared about the kitten and the mother didn’t show up, we adopted the orphan.
Since that day, Orapa, the young cat who quickly got used to life on the road, traveled with us through southern Africa. It was a joy to see her enjoying her new life and inspecting her new home in the evenings. She met rhinos, springboks, ostriches, meerkats, mice, birds, turtles and other cats, dogs and even a pet pig. Every day she became braver and made bigger jumps. Brigitta took the position that her mother should have filled – the two soon became inseparable.
Orapa quickly got used to waking up in a different place almost every morning. She became a «traveling cat» in just four weeks. When we arrived in Swakopmund on November 22nd, 2023, she had already traveled through Botswana, South Africa and Namibia. Once home, she not only took over the house but also us. He slept always between us, woke us up early in the morning to play with us, and roamed around and between our feet during the day. (We always had to be extremely careful not to step on him!)
At night, on December 4th, 2023, Orapa’s life came to an unexpected end. His small body was crushed by a car tire; he died instantly. (Perhaps better than if he had broken all his legs and had to hobble through life!)
PS 1: It wasn’t love at first sight between the two cats. But they quickly got along well and played together. Now «Glöggli» is alone again. And she misses Orapa as much as we do!
PS 2: The driver of the vehicle was as heartbroken as we were. He’s really not at fault – it was just bad luck. For him, for us and Orapa who brought us so much joy and shared and enriched our lives for (too) a short time. We buried him in our garden on December 8, 2023.
«Cats effortlessly achieve what we humans cannot:
go through life without making noise.»
Ernest Erne Hemingway (1899 – 1961)
American writer and Nobel Prize winner for literature