pets

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The Mechanics of Settling into DC

The Washington Monument from the fountain at the WWII Memorial

This post is long overdue. One could even say it has become OBE or Overcome By Events in State Department parlance. And yet I cannot quite shake the thought of putting pen to paper in an attempt to explain at least some of the processes we went through to unexpectedly curtail from an overseas tour to Washington, D.C. To explain what is largely a bureaucratic logistical exercise based on policies and procedures laid out in the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual but can become exasperating and stressful.

Moving the Cats from Guinea In a Hurry. Traveling internationally with pets has never been without its challenges. {see here and here and here for example] On airplanes, my cats have traveled cargo, excess baggage, and in-cabin, but also in the car when we drove across the U.S.-Mexican border to Ciudad Juarez. Transportation though is just one piece of the puzzle. The greater challenge is the @%$&! paperwork. It has to be done quickly and correctly in a short timeframe within the 3-7 days of travel. Before going to Guinea, Europe had instituted new rules that required all pets transiting the EU to meet the same requirements as if they were entering those countries. Though we needed an extra document endorsed by the United States Department of Agriculture / Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA-APHIS) for the plane change in Brussels, that was all given that our travel originated in the U.S. However, coming from Guinea, designated as a high-risk rabies country, one needs to have a titer test completed at least three months before travel. This would not be possible with my shortened departure timeline. Therefore, we could not fly to the U.S. through Europe. Instead, we took Ethiopian Airlines via Addis Ababa, which required us to fly nine hours in the opposite direction first, subjecting ourselves to 34 hours of travel time door to door. And the cats to 34 hours in their carriers. This included Ramen, our new diplo-kitty. It was stressful, as usual, but we managed, again.

Temporary Lodging. When transferring from an overseas posting to the U.S., a Foreign Service employee can utilize the Home Service Transfer Allowance or HSTA. It helps employees and their families to defray costs upon their return. It can cover lodging and some per diem for up to 60 days, with some possibilities to extend should household goods not yet arrive. This gave C and I a place to stay while I worked out my next steps.

Before our arrival, I had reached out to the same company that provides temporary lodging for government workers that had housed us the year before. I wanted us to be in the same apartment building we had lived in during my French training as I figured it would provide the easiest post-curtailment landing for my daughter. I did not know where we might be after the temporary lodging, but at least I could initially ensure she would be somewhere familiar and would start at the same elementary school she had been at before we went to Guinea. We move so frequently in the Foreign Service that living in a place more than once is a rarity. Not only were we able to get the same building, but when we checked in we found we had been assigned the exact same apartment we had vacated only 7 months before! Alas, the HSTA covers for only so long and I needed to find something more permanent.

Enrolling the Kiddo in School. Once we moved to Guinea, I thought I was done doing the school enrollment for a few years. Yet here we were suddenly back in northern Virginia. Luckily, I had been through the process once before when preparing for my Guinea assignment at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, and the schools in the area are very familiar with military and foreign service families moving in and out of the area. Thus the paperwork was pretty straightforward. One thing I could not do in advance though was the tuberculosis test, which is mandatory for enrollment. Though our Health Unit at the Embassy in Guinea could perform the test before departure, a test conducted while still in a country with a high incidence rate of TB will not be accepted.

It had taken longer to arrange the curtailment than expected – with bureaucracy it is always a waiting game – and thus our flight got us back to the U.S. after school had been in session for a week after winter break. To get my daughter C enrolled as quickly as possible, the TB test was a top priority. After landing, we went through immigration, gathered our belongings, got a taxi to the hotel, and then with my father’s car waiting at the hotel, we headed straight to a clinic to get that blood draw. C was then able to start school a few days into the following school week.

[Not so fun fact: Later screenings found that my daughter has latent TB, most likely as a result of our serving in Guinea. The majority of persons with latent TB in the U.S. acquired it overseas. She had to undergo long-term monitored treatment for it. Just one more gift from Guinea and an unexpected side-effect to our lifestyle.]

The Search for Permanent Housing. As a Foreign Service Officer, there is not really any housing that is permanent until one leaves the service, thus permanent housing refers to the lodging one lives in for the majority of the tour. Overseas that is one’s assigned housing. In the U.S., it is the housing the employee finds to live in.

With my 4 years of college living in dormitories, my 7 years living overseas with various study, work, and travel, and the combined 14 years overseas with the government, I have not had a whole lot of experience looking for housing. Though I had found a remote assignment and could have lived anywhere, like my condo in Florida, I felt that 1. professionally it would be better for me to be in DC, and 2. personally it would be better for my daughter to be where she had been before. When I took her to school the first day back, a friend of hers from the year before spotted her, ran toward her, and they hugged while spinning around as if they were in a movie. I knew then that staying in the DC area would be 1000% the right decision.

However, knowing you want to be in a certain area and finding housing there are two very different things. House hunting is exhausting. There is research into what one is looking for and then checking out what is actually available on the market. Then setting up viewings. Each place has positives and negatives and I imagine C and I living in each one. In many ways, it feels similar to the bidding process we go through to get our next assignments. Then one finds a place and has to apply and hope the other side likes you too.

Thankfully, I absolutely lucked out and the fourth place we look at is a gem and the owner likes us and picks us over the other potential renters. Then, because I have lived in furnished places for decades, I had to buy furniture. I had odds and ends such as a rocking chair, a decorative bench, two wood storage cabinets, a piano, and many wall hangings, but I did not own a sofa or a bed, end tables or a TV stand, dressers or desks, bookcases or lamps. I expect that seems odd for someone my age, but it must be fairly common among those with this kind of nomadic life, right? Even though I tried to buy economical pieces, all the expenses did add up. Still, there was a bit of fun to the shopping spree.

After all that, it is little wonder that I was not very keen to pull up stakes again only six to 12 months later and decided instead to remain in DC. Every move just comes with so many challenges; it never seems to get easier. It might indeed be getting harder the older I and my daughter become. Yet there are many positives to being here and C and I look forward to spending some more time here before we head back overseas. Now that the mechanics of settling in have given way to feelings of being settled.

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Introducing Our New Diplo-cat, Ramen

My daughter and I may have departed Guinea earlier than planned, but we have brought a little something from the country with us – our new Diplocat, Ramen Noodle.

We lost one of our diplo-kitties, Tikus, when in Malawi, and I had promised my daughter that she could get a kitten though noted, given the challenges of moving with pets, it would be best to wait until after our arrival in Guinea before we found our newest furry family member. Our Guinea kitty.

Before arriving in Conakry, I had heard there were quite a few feral kittens at the Kakimbo residences where we would live. I figured once we got a bit settled we could pick out one of those kitties. Turned out they were super feral little beasts that were nearly impossible to catch. On several occasions I found myself running around the parking garage trying to capture one. It did not seem like it was going to work out.

At a Country Team meeting where I was the new person and did not really know what to say I blurted out I was looking for a cat for my daughter if anyone had any leads. Lo and behold the Peace Corps Director announced that if I am looking for cats, she has cats. A whole bunch of them running around her front yard. Though she fed them, she isn’t really a fan of cats, but is concerned for their welfare when she would depart in two months. It sounded like a plan.

Thankfully after about a month with us Ramen was too large to hide inside the area in the back of the toilet

Therefore on July 11th, a Monday holiday in Guinea, I celebrated by taking one of my very first (rather terrifying) drives over to the Peace Corps Director’s house to capture our new kitten. We had initially planned to grab one of the older cats but the Peace Corps Director thought maybe it would be better to adopt a younger one. And just then this little orange tabby streaked in front of us and C knew that was the cat for her. With a pillow case and a can of tuna and five people we managed to corral that ball of fluff into our carrier and we took him home. We dubbed him Ramen and guesstimated his birthday to be April 1.

At home I placed the unzipped carrier in one of the bathrooms, set out a little food and a litter box, and then closed the door. Just to get him acclimated. When I looked in 20 minutes later, he was gone. He was not in the carrier. He wasn’t in the bathtub. He wasn’t in the under the sink cabinet even though I found a hole where he might have accessed it. I looked and looked in all the same completely obvious places where he obviously was not. I began to think I had imagined the whole thing – the drive down the narrow streets, the catching the kitten, everything. But then after a few hours, Ramen the kitten crawled out of a hidey hole in the back of the commode!

So here is something else about Conakry. Before I bid on the assignment I watched a Post bidding video – a recruitment video of sorts. One thing that was most definitely highlighted were the number of pets in the Embassy community — and I distinctly remember something along the lines of what a great Post Conakry is for pets. Well, uh, that might have been a slight exaggeration.

I heard there were basically two vets for the expat community – one who spoke English and one who spoke only French. I went with the former, a lovely, good-natured man who I think was doing the best he could with what he had available. But it sure did make for some interesting times.

Dr. K prepares to neuter Ramen in my living room – just another foreign service experience

I needed to get Ramen fixed so I called on Dr. K to perform the procedure. One nice thing for Conakry is the vets make house calls, even on the weekends. Dr. K arrived at my apartment with his scrubs on and carrying his vet bag on a Saturday morning. We would be conducting the procedure on the coffee table in my living room. Yes, you read that correctly. A veterinarian would be conducting a minor surgical operation in front of my television set. I brought out my tie-dyed towel from Jamaica to make it extra special…

I had not realized that I would be serving as the vet assistant. I held Ramen as the vet injected the anesthesia. I did not have a great grip and he bucked as the needle went in — probably a good thing as I learned later the vet was more than a little generous with dosing. I assisted as the vet shaved the area and also made the incisions. This was not how I had initially seen my day going. Dr. K wrapped things up with some sutures, handed me a prescription for some painkillers, and headed out.

There was no cone of shame. I wish I had known that Dr. K had very little supplies as I would have ordered one from the States and waited for its delivery before the procedure. The lack of that cone became problematic. But that came later.

I headed out to get the meds at the pharmacy, then I came home to monitor Ramen. He was loopy, like really loopy, for a what seemed a really long time. But then again normally, in the places I have been where my pets have had surgery (the U.S., Indonesia, Malawi), you drop off your pet in the morning and the veterinary staff will monitor the animal for several hours until you can pick them up in the afternoon. I would say usually I do not see my pet until 6-8 hours after the procedure. It was quite strange to see him so groggy, his eyes unfocused, his third eyelid visible.

Mealtimes started to get a little weird with Ramen around

Over the next few days Ramen seemed very off. I kept trying to give the medication as prescribed, but the pills seemed large for a 5 pound cat. I conducted a little Google sleuthing and discovered that the vet had prescribed Ramen 150 mg of doxycycline each day. I had felt bad that the pharmacy had only had 100 mg pills. Yet, it turned out the typical dosage is 2 milligrams of doxycycline per pound of body weight – or only 10 mg for a five pound cat! The vet had prescribed 15 times that dosage! Once I discovered this, three days in, I stopped giving the medication altogether. He got his energy back, but developed a weird cough. A week later he ripped out his stiches and one incision site looked bad. Online I learned that usually stiches are not even necessary for neutering. I was beginning to worry he was not going to recover from what should have been a fairly straightforward procedure.

Luckily he did.

I also had Dr. K given him his first rabies shot and microchip. Dr. K told me he had no microchips so I would have to order one and he would inject it. I bought a pack of two off Amazon. After the insertion I gave the extra one to Dr. K and he was ecstatic. He thanked me profusely. He said it was one of the best gifts he had ever been given. I wish I had ordered a ten pack.

Ramen grew on us quickly. He is the mushiest cat I have ever had. Most nights he slept draped across my daughter or curled up near her head. A couple times a week I was the lucky one to have him join me for a snooze. He was (and still is!) naughty as well. He refuses to use the cardboard cat scratchers and he and his claws kept me in terror of his ripping up the faux leather sofas in our Conakry apartment or the carpet in our Virginia housing. We have showered him with cat towers with sisal fiber joints that he does at least sometimes scratch, and I have acquired a spray water bottle for when he invariably attempts another scratch location.

He is a rather extraordinary cat. We taught him to play fetch with some small bouncy balls and now when he wants to play he will jump up to the bed or the sofa carrying one of the balls or even one of his mouse toys.

Ramen looks forward to more travels as a diplo-cat

He is also so, so good. As a young, energetic cat who gets a serious case of the zoomies twice a day I had no idea how he might respond to being cooped up in his carrier for the duration of our flight from Guinea to the United States upon our departure. Because the EU put new guidelines in place in early 2022 that require all transiting pets to meet EU pet import requirements, we could not fly through Europe. (The guidelines require a titer test for all pets coming from “countries of concern” for rabies. The test necessitates at least a three month lead time. Both the blood draw and laboratory testing for the titer would be difficult, if not impossible, in Guinea.) Therefore, we had to fly through Addis Ababa – an eight hour flight and a one hour stop in Abidjan – going in the opposite direction first. Then the 17 hour flight from Addis to Washington, DC via Dublin. All told our two cats – Kucing and Ramen – spent about 34 hours in the carriers going door to door. Ramen made not a peep.

And now we are back in the U.S. Well C, Kucing, and I are back. This is Ramen’s first time here. We lived first in temporary housing for 2 months and then moved into more permanent housing, meaning within the first year of his life Ramen has lived in four locations: Peace Corps Director’s yard, our home in Guinea, our temporary quarters in Virginia, and now our apartment in Virginia. He has a long way to go to catch up with Kucing, who has lived in six countries at a total of 14 addresses, but he is well on his way to being a proper Diplo-cat.

P.S. It turned out that the rabies and distemper shots Ramen got in Guinea were for dogs. We found out at his first vet check-up in the US. This could explain his interest in playing fetch….