Tamanya is home!

Though I’ve been back in Cairo for three days, for various reasons it wasn’t logistically possible for me to get Tamanya bak until today. She’s just in time for her vet appointment this evening.

This time, she clearly remembers both me and the apartment; after I returned from Oxford it was pretty clear that she didn’t. The length of absence was 8-10 days in both cases.

Nada did a great job with Tamanya, but she seems not to like Nada’s cats as much as Wafaa’s, so it’s possible that Wafaa will do the bulk of the babysitting during the summer. We’ll see. Wafaa is the recently retired longtime Assistant to the Provost, while Nada is one of the three young women on the Provost’s staff. Both are great animal lovers. I’m very fortunate that both have been willing to help with my recent and upcoming travels.

Changes in Tamanya since I last saw her…

*Not sure if she’s heavier (we’ll know at the vet’s today). But she’s definitely longer.

*The biting has gone way down. She’s bitten me once in half an hour. The Tamanya of late May would have bitten me 40 or 50 times by now.

*She’s even more athletic than before. What an amazing jumper! And she finds such joy in doing it just for the sake of doing it– jumping as far as she can between two very remote pieces of furniture, for instance.

*She’s a bit less interested in food than before, though maybe Nada gave her a huge breakfast. I’m not sure about that.

*Less emotional neediness. She still likes to be in the same room I’m in at all times, but doesn’t necessarily need to be biting or touching me at all times like before.

*As a corollary to the previous point, while she’s still interested in mischief, it now seems more like mischief for her own amusement’s sake, not for the sake of getting my attention so that I’ll pick her up.

*Her color pattern is changing a bit. She used to be mostly dark with only a few white mottled spots (enough so that some people wrongly described her as a black cat after seeing her once). But now the mottled parts are increasing in size, especially on the chest.