Apologies at the beginning, because the title for this post is a really poor pun on the title of this blog. (I tell you this in case you weren't really paying attention.) But cats have been in the news in Afghanistan recently. First, the good news. The snow leopard of Afghanistan, considered extremely endangered, turns out to have a surprisingly healthy population in the Wakhan Corridor, in the high mountains of northeast Afghanistan, according to a report from National Geographic.
On the down side, read this story from the Washington Post about the cat population of the American Embassy in Kabul. It is, by the way, absolutely true that the Embassy has a pretty big population of semi-domesticated cats that most people either like or tolerate. The account of the crisis in the Embassy is wholly accurate, I would say. I was in Kabul when the "cat town meeting" was held, and although I didn't attend the meeting, by all accounts it was raucous. Never get between a cat and a cat lover, is my advice. My colleague feels bad that Ambassador Keith, the Assistant Chief of Mission, was called out in the Post article. I just think that if you are an Ambassador, you want to get in the newspapers standing up to tyranny or at least welcoming Lady Gaga. Not for cat genocide.
Personally, I always thought the cats were non-offensive at worst, rather sweet at best. They certainly didn't deserve the threatening notices posted all around the cafeteria. Except for the black cat that all too often sat on the steps of the Old Chancery, where our offices were located. We were convinced that this one was the Iranian Spy Cat, and no doubt deserved deportation, though certainly not execution.
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