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Wang
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Written by Wang w'Angamba
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Thursday, 06 August 2009 13:12 |
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If the old girl back in the village hears that his great grandson’s weekend pastime is catching wild felines, she is likely to run to her witchdoctor to sort me out. That is if she survives the shock.
If she wasn’t a loving great grandmother, like all grandmothers are, she would have summoned my dad to brag about how she had been vindicated.
See, she always said there was something weird about me. But then, don’t all grandmothers, especially when the only thing their grandkids are good at is stealing the roasted groundnuts meant to be served with cassava and tea for breakfast? Anyway, for what is left of the old woman’s sanity, let’s hope that no one will break the news to her that her great grandson has taken to chasing down wild cats in American bushes.
So, how did I end up enrolling in the cat-catching squad in the first place? It is not exactly like signing up for the U.S. Marines, less still the boy scouts. All it took, really, was an appeal on the neighbourhood notice board for “volunteers to catch stray cats”, and a bit of boredom. I figured that running after scared cats was way better than spending my Saturday mornings jumping up and down the digital mat of my “Dance Dance Revolution” Wii video game, like a five-year-old. I’m not too sure the old girl would agree that chasing cats is adult stuff, but we agreed we are not going to let her in on our secret, right? Anyway, come Saturday morning, I was at the local church by 8am, all suited up in my running gear, ready to catch a cat. In my mind, catching a cat was like catching a chicken back in the village. The organisers would give us one of those traps I have seen in the movies, you know, the ones comprising a pole with a basket-shaped net on the other end, and unleash us on the bastards. Instead, they gave us tins of mackerel fish and told us to go “make friends” with the wild cats! Seriously. We are supposed to report back in a week for further instructions on how to lure our cat friends out of the bush!
Believe me, befriending a wild cat is the most boring thing you ever want to do. My “Dance Dance Revolution” is 100 times more exhilarating. I was tempted to eat the mackerel and call it a day. But in the spirit of voluntarism, I decided to stick it out.
As of writing this, I hadn’t succeeded in making a single cat friend. So much for weekend excitement.
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