Alabanza

"Alabanza" - refers to hymns of praise.

Alabanza is also the name of a stray cat that one of the OMF Partners rescued 8 months ago. She was a really small kitten with a black coat on her back with white legs. She lived with her rescuers for the past months until recently, when her owners have to return to the States....

It had been decided who Alabanza will be given to, but her new owner is off on a one-month trip back home. So at the end, Alabanza went to another couple just for the month - and both are OMF Partners as well. Now, the husband really doesn't like small animals, and the wife thought this would be the perfect opportunity to see whether they can live with a cat, since she is a cat lover herself. Two weeks went by... and then suddenly, the wife had an emergency and was admitted to the hospital, so the cat was left without much human contact since the husband was busy with work and caring for his wife.

The rest of the Partners in Downtown went to visit the cat... and Ansy really bonded well with her and wanted to take her home too! Then suddenly, on Sunday night, when Ansy went up to see Alabanza, she couldn't find her anywhere!!!! After searching the whole apartment and the building, it's been decided that the cat must have escaped when a group from church came over to the apartment. Since they had no idea that there was a cat in the apartment, she must have sneaked out when nobody was looking.

While Ansy was telling me this sad story at 10:30pm on Sunday night, we suddenly got a call from the husband, who told us he saw the cat downstairs on the streets! Hence a search party was called and all the OMF Partners in Downtown (minus 3 of them) were on the streets with flashlights, calling out "Banza" or "here, kitty kitty..." in the middle of the night. I think we were quite a scene.... since it's not everyday that you see a group of foreigners on the streets looking for a cat... squatting down low and making meowing sounds.... XD
We tried putting cat food everywhere, and jiggling keys and squeaking Alabanza's favourite toys to get her to come out of hiding. The husband was really frustrated, especialy since he saw the cat not long ago....

After walking up and down the streets for some time, one of us saw a cat and we all chased it down the alleyway! After the cat disappeared into one of the buildings, we looked around and saw two kittens sitting on one of the nearby roofs! They all look like Alabanza.... and we believe they must be relatives of her, since Alabanza was picked off the streets nearby. By that time, Leanne (one of the Partner's Taiwanese wife) and I were watching the stray kittens eat Alabanza's cat food and thinking of capturing one of them and dying its fur to make it resemble Alabanza. We both thought this was pretty amusing, if it wasn't for the grim situation....

Suddenly, the husband shouted for us that he had found Alabanza, so we all went over to look.... However, the cat he was pointing at was white, and much bigger than Alabanza.... which meant that he's been seeing and chasing the wrong can all this time!!!.... and it didn't surprise many of us that he couldn't recognize his own cat ^^""

So that was it... we walked around for a little bit more... the husband went to the hospital to see his wife (and to get the axe from her)... we left food around and went on our way home to sleep....

Poor Alabanza.... =(