The Cat Attack in our Bedroom at 3am.
It was at Kipushya Mission, Kasai Orientale, D.R. Congo about 1976. Esther and I were sound asleep in our huge
room like mosquito net. The cat had a hole in the side door where it could go
out and in when it liked. Our long haired grey points male Siamese was a bit of
a wuss.
Without any forewarning there was a huge cat fight right
under our bed. The terrifying noise
quickly woke us from our stupor and I started to scream and try to chase them
out. Remember that in the middle of the Congo we only had electricity for a
couple of hours each night. Otherwise we had candles, Aladdin Lamps and torches.
So I screamed to Esther while standing up on the bed in the darkness caught up in the huge net, with heart racing, “
GET the TORCH!” Esther bent down to pick up the torch on the floor beside the
bed. You couldn’t believe it. She
knocked over the torch and the batteries all spilled out under the bed.
By this time the noise had subsided and we untangled
ourselves in the darkness from the net as our pulse rate was starting to come
back to normal. We eventually found all the batteries for our torch and went to
see the damage to our cat. He didn’t seem to be any more the worst for the
fight, but we had lost five years off our life span and were now suffering from
post traumatic stress disorders.
Next morning our missionary nurse neighbour, Joan Bond,
inquired, “Did you hear that poor goat suffering last night?”
Esther replied, “No, that was Ken trying to chase a cat”.
“No”, she insisted, “it was a poor goat and I went looking
for it but could not find it”. Sometimes they had fallen down the open pit
toilets on the hospital compound.
Esther explained but Joan just couldn’t believe what she was
being told. Apparently I had made more noise than the cats and woken the
neighbours nearby.
The Attacker was a big male cat which belonged to our senior
missionaries across the Mission station. I warned them that if their cat EVER
set foot in our house again I would be forced to take stern measures.
You guessed it. Just two weeks latter there was another
battle of the males and I rushed quickly to the hole in the door and pushed a
rolled - up piece of carpet in the hole to block the escape. Then I went
looking for the culprit. He had attacked our cat sitting on a bag causing it to
defecate all over the big bag of rice. I chased him into the bathroom and
locked the door.
When the house-help, Y’Eshiba, arrived at 6am I said in passing, “There is an animal in the bathroom
please could you get rid of it for me.”
We never saw the intruder again. Africans like fresh meat.
Twenty year later while saying in the senior missionary’s
home in the UK I confessed. Nothing was ever said and thus endeth the lesson
about allowing strange cats into your house at night.
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