Paradigm Farms Horse Retirement: South Africa and a Stray Kitten

Thursday, June 20, 2019

South Africa and a Stray Kitten

In late May the Webb family departed from Tennessee and traveled to South Africa for two weeks. Going on safari somewhere on the continent of Africa has been something I've wanted to do for as long as I can remember. It took some convincing to get Jason on board with this trip. Although we've done plenty of international travel together, to say he's not a fan of flying would be an understatement. I was asking him to get on one of the longest flights in the world, Atlanta to Johanessburg, for sixteen hours. We purchased our plane tickets in early January, and the next day Jason immediately wanted to cancel them. Thankfully I talked him out of it, and he even proceeded to be our vacation planner.

Jason did an expert job planning our trip to South Africa. We did our first couple of days on safari in Pilanesburg national park. We then moved on to Madikwe where we stayed at Tau Game Lodge. We stayed several days at Tau and our experience there was indescribable. Not just that the service was top notch and the people so warm and friendly. The game viewing was incredible. The lodge is situated at a natural watering hole and it made the safari drives almost unnecessary. You could watch an incredible variety of wildlife all day as they came up to get water.

The vervet monkeys had the routine at Tau down pat. There wouldn't be a monkey in sight, and then about five minutes before a meal time (all meals were served at the main lodge on an outdoor terrace) the trees around the lodge would start to bustle with vervets. You were warned not to leave phones, wallets or cameras on the table as the monkeys would swipe them. As soon as the staff would turn their backs a vervet would be raiding the fruit section of the buffet. I'm sure the locals long ago ceased to find them entertaining, but we thought they were great.

We then flew on to Cape Town which is a stunning city with an incredibly rich history. We were in Cape Town for a few days and then flew back to Johanessburg. We spent our last day in Johanessburg before boarding the long flight back to Atlanta. Jason and I agree that our trip to South Africa exceeded our wildest expectations. Even Jason declared the 16 hour flight worth it, and agrees with me that he's not sure any trip we ever take will be able to compare with our time in South Africa. I will forever treasure our time in South Africa, and am grateful that we had the opportunity to go.

Before we even boarded our flight back to Atlanta I was already back in reality. Our amazing help had let me know that a skinny, terrified kitten had showed up at one of the barns. I'm running out of people to beg to take the latest stray dog, puppy, cat or kitten that shows up at our farm. I spent my time in the airport madly texting anyone I could think of that hadn't already kindly adopted one of our sad strays. Sadly I have yet to find any takers. On a better note the kitten has gone from feral and terrified to exceptionally friendly and cuddly. If anyone is looking for a super friendly kitten, I can hook you up!

I took almost 1,500 pictures in South Africa and have not had time to even finish sorting and looking through them, but I've posted a few below. I followed those up with some cute kitten pictures as I know someone relatively local to us will want this cutie. You will have to scroll through a lot of South Africa and kitten pictures to get to the horse pictures!

our terrified, skinny stray kitten is gaining weight nicely and is now very friendly and very self confident

Igor has had a rough adjustment getting used to the idea of sharing his space with the kitten, but he's finally started to be somewhat accepting of the kitten's presence