Cats (UNPUBLISHED: 2007)

I yawn at the hoopla over Oscar the so-called grim rea-purr. All this fuss over a little puss is warrantless. So this feline phenom can apparently smell death. Big freaking deal. I could have told you that. You see, my people have known for centuries that a cat ain’t nothing but bad luck so we don’t let them indoors. But if I had told you, you all would have called me a superstitious African. It’s not superstition. It’s empiricism.

August 1989: Residents of a village in North-Eastern Ghana report a pre-dawn sighting of a witch coming back from whatever it is that witches do at night, but she turned into a cat before a mob arrived. The said cat was banished from the village, never to be seen again.

June 1991: Three brothers in a small fishing community in Benin die a day after one another after trapping a cat that was drinking their palm oil at night.

July 2007: Enter Oscar

Let me put it out there, I personally don’t like cats. Don’t like to pet them, don’t like to feed them, don’t even like to date their owners. I think they’re creepy, they’re stealthy, they can sleep standing, they have whiskers, and they scratch people.

Armed with the wisdom of my forefathers I had a healthy apprehension when, in elementary school, I read the old story of Puss-in-Boots, the cat that, armed with a pair of boots and a bag and through cunning, helped its master attain wealth and status. Must have been a fairy tale for the European kids for whom it was ostensibly written but for me it was eerily real because I had seen a cat stand on its hind limbs and drink water from a mug.

In fact, stories and videos abound on the Internet of cats doing the darnedest things: dancing, swimming, scuba-diving, skateboarding, playing the piano, sucking on a dog’s breast. That’s not normal animal behavior. Hell, none of these behaviors are normal. There are even websites, such as oldsuperstitions.com, that list different maledictions as they relate to man’s relations with cats. For instance, the English reportedly believe that illness will forever reign in a house where a cat deserts, the Dutch believe that cats should not be allowed to listen in on private conversations because they will spread gossip around town, and the Irish believe to kill a cat leads to seventeen years of bad luck. In the movies, a cat is the accessory of choice for Dr. Evil in Austin Powers and some villains in James bond flicks.

There’s a reason why so many people are allergic to cats. It’s our bodies’ natural defense against them. As you may know, some people do eat cats. It’s probably their way of protecting themselves from bigger evil in the same way a small dose of pox gives you protection from smallpox.

In the interest of fairness, dogs are no sheep either. They are considered unclean in Islam. Actually, no animal is immune from some form of suspicion or superstition from some part of the world or religion. Apparently, you should worry about a bat flying into the house, seeing an owl during the day, three butterflies together, a dog howling for no reason, a bird call from the north, hearing a rooster crow at night, a crow (the bird) under any circumstance is a harbinger of death. The list is endless.

Come to think of it, all animals can be bad luck so be careful whom you let into your house. If you’re unsure about your new pet, I know a guy in Benin.