Tisa!

Kelly and I had been talking about getting a cat from practically day one. And a few weeks ago Becca came home from Matumba, the second hand market (this place is great; you can usually buy dresses and skirts for 2,000 or 3,000 shillings; roughly $1.50 or 2 dollars) But anyway…Becca came home from Matumba one day and said her and Juliette met a man who was selling kittens. I think it was the next day or two days later that Kelly and I made up an excuse to go to Matumba and look for the kitten man. When we found him, he had three kittens that he was selling. Two were tiny and white and grey and one was bigger with a grey almost tabby appearance. She was three months old and could go home that day while the other kittens were only a month old and had to stay with the mother cat for another month.

(I love her eyes. They change color depending on the background. The other day when I was wearing a green dress, her eyes matched exactly. And right now she's curled up beside me on the couch and they are a golden brown like the wooden furniture.)

Kelly and I talked it over and ended up taking the grey tabby kitten that day. We ran to Shoprite real quick to pick up kitty supplies and then went straight back and got her.

We named her Tatica, which in Kiswahili means to complicate or to puzzle; though for short we call her Tisa which is the number 9 in Kiswahili. Cause she’s a cat and has nine lives. Yeah, we’re clever.

She’s a bit of a spaz most of the time but also very loving. She loves to run around like a maniac and attack whatever is near; including bags, feet, chair legs, whatever. But then almost every night she sleeps curled up on top of my side inbetween my hipbone and my ribcage (though she does like to wake me up in the morning by biting my toes)

We've come to find out that she may have a bit of African wildcat in her. The African wildcat is an undomesticated species that grows a bit bigger than domesticated cats and has a rambunctious personality that almost never works out as a pet. Her coat markings match the wildcat's and she's doubled in size since we got her....

Picture of an African wildcat below:

Notice the head markings and stripes on the legs. Carbon copy.