To the vet

A month after my cat Meri’s 2^nd litter of 4 kittens, I decided to get her spayed.  This was partially to comply with my follow-up volunteer’s wishes to not raise kittens, and partially because it can’t be healthy for a cat to have 3 litters a year for too many years.

I called up a number for a vet in a nearby town.  He told me he could pick me and the cat up at the bus stop at any time.  Early my last Sunday morning living in the community, I walked an hour with my cat in my arms to my volunteer neighbor’s house to borrow her cat carrier, and then we headed down to the bus stop in a truck.  My cat Meri and I waited 2-1/2 hours for the vet to come in the hot, filthy bus stop – I called the vet two times and both times he said he would be right there.  Get me out of Panama.

A neighboring grandmother wants to trade a chicken for one of the kittens.

Errr.....

He finally arrived in a nice SUV and picked me up.  Instead of driving to the nearby town, he took me to a large estate house next to a huge rice milling plant, the biggest employer in the area.  Confusedly I walked into the house and realized that the family was preparing for the 93 year old grampa’s birthday celebration.  The vet told me he would take care of my cat soon, and drove off in his SUV.

I could have been stranded in worse places.  The extended family slowly arrived in various vehicles, and fed me the classic birthday meal, arroz con pollo (rice with chicken).  I couldn’t believe how similar the event was to family birthdays back at home.  The kids were playing around back, the aunts were handing out food and gossiping, and the uncle was making a delicious concoction (ceviche) in the kitchen.  I didn’t even want to talk to anyone about being a Peace Corps volunteer in the Comarca, I just wanted to sit back and watch.  I was just really glad to have borrowed the cat carrier, because it would have been awkward to have my cat in my arms the entire time.

After lunch, the vet took Meri into a back room and did the operation.  Soon after, the heavy rains came with vengeance  so I had no choice but to stay.  Eventually the cake came out and we sang “Happy Birthday” in English, with the 2^nd verse in Spanish.  I guess that’s what Upper Middle Class Panamanian families do?  Digital camera and Blackberry phones were snapping photos and the baby blew out the candle on the cake.

In the evening, the rain finally stopped and the family members started to leave.  The family fed me dinner and then offered to drive me up the mountain to my community entrance so that I would not have to wait for the passenger truck.  I said goodbye to the vet, who wouldn’t accept my payment, and then the older couple drove me up the hill, back into the Comarca.  Twenty minutes after my deja-vu family birthday celebration, I was back in the land of non-birthdays. 

Post- operation

In the following week, I gave lots of non-formal education to my community members and neighbors about sterilizing animals.  While male castration is done locally, most people did not know that it was possible to spay a cat or dog.  Granted, most likely only a very special person could get away with attending a gluttonous birthday celebration and getting her cat spayed for free, simultaneously.