Ramizan [7]

Vincent says: Ramizan came into my life last September when my professor entered the classroom with a suspicious look on her face, closed the door, then pulled out one of the tiniest kittens I had ever seen from her purse. The day before, she caught a neighborhood kid about to “dispose of” the poor thing in a nearby dumpster and thankfully stopped her before the deed could be done. However, the kitten was so underfed, dirty, and sickly that she herself couldn’t get it to eat or drink, and so in exasperation brought it to class to see if any of the students were willing to take care of it. I always considered myself a “dog person,” but after four hours of class, with the little creature perched next to my textbook as if reading along with me, my heart was won over. I volunteered to take care of the kitten for the next six months, then give her back.

While good souls are rescuing many kittens daily in Western countries, our situation was unique in that we were living in a place called Xinjiang in China, located deep in the heart of the Eurasian continent and populated with a Turkic people, the Uyghurs, closer to the Afghans and Uzbeks than the people of inner China. That month happened to be Ramadan, a Muslim religious season where people do not eat and drink anything during the day, and so when Ramizan refused to eat and drink, we joked that she was “fasting,” and thus she got her name, the Uyghur word for "Ramadan." Luckily, some kitten food softened with warm water was just the ticket and and after a few weeks (and a much needed bath) Ramizan was back to full health and living the happy, playful life every kitten deserves. As you all can guess, after six months passed, I abandoned the plan of “giving Ramizan back” and we went through the utter red-tape nightmare of applying for Ramizan’s “animal passport” as required by Chinese law. But we did it, and after a grueling 30 hours in an aviation kennel we lovingly call the “AdventureMobile,” Ramizan made it to her new home in Tennessee, USA. A kitten with Uyghur ancestry, a Chinese passport, and American residency, Ramizan is, in my eyes, a true feline globetrotter.