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The Players: The U.S. Embassy in Kabul; The Cat Committee, embassy staff members and cat lovers.
The Opening Serve: The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Embassy is in Kabul is home to around 25-30 cats. First the cats then the bites they say. At least one, if not two, embassy staffers were bitten and perhaps scratched by the somewhat-feral cats says The Post. The embassy responded with warnings and rabies vaccines. Another said that this was sign of the cats' demise. "That meant exterminate," one staffer told The Post. In April, one of the embassy’s top diplomats, James Keith, held a discussion on exterminating the felines. The proposal allowed for 60 days to adopt and perhaps ship the cats to asylum, while the rest would meet an uncertain fate.
The Return Volley: The calls for extermination resulted in the formation of the embassy's "Cat Committee." "We basically can’t go out at all. We can’t walk across the street; we have to take a tunnel. There are no kids, no families, and basically what we have is the cats,” one member of the committee told The Post. “It’s as close as we come to normality." Someone writing under the name "Bacon and the Katz" posted a plea on behalf of the cats obtained by The Post: “Why oh why must we die?...Most of you will return to the US where the living is easy and good / We apologize if our actions (purring and eating) have been misunderstood. / Please do not despise us nor wish for our demise / We cannot help it that we have cat’s eyes.”