BY

KHAMIS KABEU
Professor McMillan had not slept much when he was woken up again by the noise of rain pattering on the palm-thatch roof. He was quite glad, for the garden needed rain badly. But it turned out to be Mkombozi, his little cat. To reach the roof she must have used the wheelbarrow as a launching pad to get on the top of the wall surrounding his inner court; no mean feat for such a small animal (she was only three months old). Why she was called Mkombozi, is a long story.

For sometime, the Professor had always kept dogs as pets, not cats. However, the Muslims of Burundaniyya who looked upon dogs as unclean animals hated them so much that they poisoned them all in a religious frenzy. After they had killed his dog Takataka that way and the following year Sarusaru and six of her seven puppies, the Professor took the remaining puppy to Rajab in the wilderness and decided to do without pets.

Nevertheless, soon afterwards, he saw a kitten on the refuse heap beside his house being stoned by a small group of young boys. So he rescued the little cat, but did not give it back to its owner, Shaikh Abdulsalam of the shop at the other side of the road, because he always took kittens away from their mother when they were far too young, and then fed them badly. So these kittens would either die miserably of hunger or escape to the refuse heap in search of food and get tortured to death.

This one was so young that it could not even eat properly, but on a diet of milk and mashed herring in tomato sauce it started to thrive. He had found fish in tomato sauce perfect food for small, abandoned kittens -- and he had reared several by then -- although it gave them a bit of diarrhoea. The Japanese brands were particularly good, much better than the tins from Thailand. Anyhow, this first one regarded him so much as her mother that for a full week she refused to sleep anywhere else than on his lap or pressed against him, which was rather a bother. They called her Mkombozi, which means helpmate, because she always helped Rajab to do the washing up.

A few months later, the Professor had to go to Europe and took Mkombozi to Rajab in the wilderness where he had promised to take care of her while he was away. But part of Rajab's farm is covered with forest and here, poor Mkombozi, barely six months old, was seduced, or perhaps brutally raped by a bushcat, not a domestic cat but a real one. So she was pregnant when she came back to him and in due cause the birth pangs started.

Mkombozi was so upset by the sudden pains that she would not leave his lap until the last possible moment. He still had the time to grab the loose seat of an old overstuffed chair, throw it in a corner of the kitchen and put her on top of it before the first baby kitten, which left him speechless with admiration since it was pure silver.

Beautiful! Soon afterwards the second one arrived and made him cry in horror, for this was a little monster. Black with very long hair, an enormous head, a squat body and thick tail. It did not look like a domestic cat at all. So he looked up the African Wild Cat in his Field Guide and they described this animal as resembling a thickset, broad -- headed tabby cat, but with a shorter tail and less distinct body marks. They did not mention long hairs or the tail being very thick, but the likeness was enough for him to look up the Latin name of bushcats. This they wrote was Felis lybica, which he took for a misspelt 'rafiki,' so the kitten had to be named Rafiki (which means friend). Rajab then insisted that the silver one should also get a synonym to prevent her from becoming jealous, so she was named Habibah -- which also means friend.

These two were giving him a lot of work because Mkombozi was so in inexperienced that she did not know how to handle them. Long before the kitten's eyes were open, she would go to his chair mewing and mewing till he followed her to the kitchen where one of the kitten's had fallen off the thick, pillow -- like seat on which they were born. Although he showed Mkombozi repeatedly that she could take them by the scruff of the neck and put them back, she never mastered this trick and came looking for help every time one of the kitten's had fallen off, until they finally learned to climb back themselves.
ENDIT
KHAMIS KABEU -- 2005
P. O. BOX 3073
MOMBASA
KENYA