The vet pays a visit

I've been trying to put up a post about our visit to the school last week and have started to sort and make collages of several photos. However, my friend Amanda's cat, Matewis, (Afrikaans for Matthew)  is due to be neutered. Amanda had to fly out to South Africa rather suddenly last week to be with her sister who is undergoing chemo. I said I would continue with our quest to get the cat "fixed".

In Tanzania, seeing the vet is quite a challenging affair. The vet has no surgery so he comes to your home. His "office" is in Mwanza 160kms from Mwadui and he uses a piki-piki (motorbike) taxi as transport. In January he made a house visit to me so that he could inoculate our three cats with their annual vaccinations. I had brought the injections in from South Africa so all he had to do was administer the treatment. At the time, he arrived here alone so I had to help hold the cats while he injected them.

The current set-up has taken some orchestrating. Yesterday morning I phoned the vet who said he'd let me know tomorrow if he could come. Knowing the casual African manner, I stopped him in mid-sentence. I said to him he has to give me a firm date as I need to let the owner (Amanda's husband, Andre) know not to feed Matewis on the day of surgery and also to keep him indoors. Grant and I had taken one of our cat-travel cages to Andre's house last night and Andre will place him in there to make it easier for me to find him when I arrive with the vet. The vet then said he'd be here at 2pm. I also had to remind him to bring his assistant. He didn't seem very keen and I'm hoping against hope he does this else I'll have to assist with the surgery! Ewgh! 

When Grant and I returned from SA, we brought the correct inoculations and a micro-chip for Matewis.  I've just been on CHAT with Amanda who's told me where the injections are (in the fridge) and where to find the micro-chip (on the book-case near the sofa) 

 Matewis was very possesive of all the toys and constantly got under our feet while we were sorting through them last week

Please pray with me that all goes well with the operation and other procedures tomorrow and that I can report to Amanda that her kitty is in fine fettle! 
 

For more posts on other people's worlds, please click here

NOTE: If you're interested in how to pronounce Matewis, this may help:

Ma (as in "Ma" the cowboy's mother) te : the "e" is a long drawn-out  vowel which sounds similar to "ear") wis is pronounced viss : 

 MA-TE-WIS