The furry things in life

Oh happy day. We've flown a lot of hours this month so we're having to stand-down for a few days until February comes along. Today was a welcome break, I slept in an extra hour and then headed out to the office to make my phone calls. As I was chatting away with friends and family, I can't remember which in particular at the moment, I happened to hear the particular meow and whine of our little adopted Afghan cat outside the door.

Everyone is quite taken with her, especially our usually gruff and dour Russian mechanics. She doesn't usually just walk around like a normal cat, she scurries and bounds with her tail straight in the air. She's like one of the little kids you see walking down the street who can't just walk; they bounce up and down the curb, hop, skip, and jump as they go along their way. Whenever she approaches, all of the tough guy talk just disappears and a bunch of grizzled old ex-communist tough guys all lean over to pet her as she moseys around. In universal baby-talk tones they mutter adorations in Russian. "Mmmphty mpmmghty hrrassskavakakakaka, Maskha. Ooooooh Maskha." I'm sure it translates something, "Who's my pretty kitty, look at the kitty, Mashka!"

She's also a friend of the Evergreen and Presidential aviation guys as well as every passing soldier at their terminal. American soldiers, even the ones who claim to not like cats, all seem to have a soft spot for them here. She has a unique habit of hopping up on people's shoulders and either riding around like a parrot if they're going somewhere interesting or she drapes herself across the back of their neck like a dead animal fur and goes to sleep. It was pretty funny to see a SEAL with all of his battle rattle on just melt as she jumped up on his body armor and playfully batted his radio antenna and bumped noses with him. It was even funnier to see all of his teammates swarming him to pet her. Everyone loves Mashka.

We were talking about her today up in the operations office and the supervisor was joking about a little test he pulled on his wife. He casually mentioned to her that maybe she could send him such-and-such items, something trivial. She acknowledged with a rather dismissive, "yeah....yeah...I'll get it...." Then a few minutes later he mentioned that "We have a cute little cat that we adopted out on the flightline, maybe you could send a little something for the cat?" Haha and of course she immediately jumped all over it and promised the cat all kinds of nice stuff. Additionally, not too long ago I got a nice big box from my mom. I always love those because they're so full of goodies and things that I didn't know I needed but that I'll eat anyway. Much to my surprise and to the amusement of my roommate, inside were 3 forwarded credit card statements for me and probably a good 10 lbs of treats for the damn cat. And to top it off, our department admin girl always greets us with "Hi guys, how's the cat???"

Unfortunately Mashka is against the rules and she has a death sentence hanging over her cute little head if she gets caught. The military's General Order #1 forbids the feeding and care of stray animals. Nevermind all the mice and rats that she kills for us. So we decided to ship her back home. I'm building a little website to solicit donations for us to ship her back to a good home. The SPCA lady in Kabul said that it'd probably cost around $2,000. Already almost everyone in our department has pledged money. I think Mashka just might make it out of here alive and finish off her life in a better place.

I love every touch of normal I can get over here.

It's been an interesting month so far and I guess that also makes it an interesting year. I just hope the rest of the year goes a little bit smoother than it has so far but it's looking like January will continue to be a rough month.

So far it's only the 21st and already I've run into a few issues both work and personal that have left me feeling rather disappointed. I can honestly say that most of the time I am quite the optimist. I genuinely want good things to happen in the world and any schadenfreude from me tends to be reserved for my friends and coworkers who can appreciate the humor in their misfortune. I'm good at outwardly dismissing things but negativity directed at me does affect me...unfortunately. So far I've caught a lot of it from buddies who didn't really mean it, strangers, pax, and a few other people. What's up with January, huh? This month needs to get over with already. Ah well, like the hippy says, gotta keep movin' on!

I did get the chance to head up to the mountains as the weather was deteriorating the other day. I took a million pictures but unfortunately while my camera is a super-tough outdoorsy camera but it couldn't quite capture the stunningly rugged beauty of the moment. Here's my best attempt though!