ZUHRAH LEAVES HOME
It was three in the morning, but Zuhrah was already up. She slept outside as she’d been doing since a week ago when Do stopped letting her inside. She decided to sneak out of the house to see Kofi, if he had some leftover garbage she could eat. As she stepped out through the mansion’s grand gate that had bars just wide apart for her to slip through, it started raining. Zuhrah hated the rain, probably because it almost gave her pneumonia when she got lost at first. She was on her way to Kofi’s refuse dump when she thought about something that she’d not thought of earlier.
“I have to get out of this house before I stop fitting through the gate bars,” Zuhrah thought to herself.
Zuhrah was so surprised how she never considered the fact that with the rate at which she was growing in size, she would not be able to sneak out through the bars of the gate, and that would be the end. She would never see her friends again, and she would definitely die of starvation. Do would never allow the gateman to let Zuhrah go outside, and the gateman himself even hated dogs. He would throw stones at her and shoo her away every time she went close to him. The rain had begun to get heavier, so Zuhrah had to run faster.
“Ete sen? Hope the rain didn’t soak you too much,” Kofi said as he groomed his smooth grey-white fur. ‘Ete sen’ means ‘how are you?’ in the Twi language of Ghana.
“Eye. Well, the rain did. I am starving. You have some food left?” Zuhrah said, shaking off water from her fur and licking her paws dry. ‘Eye’ means ‘I’m fine’ in Twi.
“Chale, you’re in luck today. I have a selection of half-eaten grilled tilapia with only few maggots in it this time, some badly burnt jollof, some expired cat food, a cracked jar of sour milk and this time, a whole can of perfectly fine dog food! I’ve been living in this refuse dump all my life and I’ve never seen a whole can of dog food in a dump!” Kofi said, purring as he arched his back. ‘Chale’ means ‘friend’. ‘Chale’ is pronounced as ‘Cha-lay’.
“It’s why my name is Atiyah! I’m so lucky. Let’s dig in,” Zuhrah said, already eyeing the dog food. She was wagging her fluffy tail and there was this euphoria she had, probably because she hadn’t eaten a good meal in days.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you something, Kofi. I’m fed up of Do, and I want to run away. Do you think that is a good idea?” Zuhrah asked as she and Kofi ate the half-eaten fish.
“Hmm. Chale. You’re like a pikin to me. I know, I’m a cat and you’re a dog, but that’s not the point. You’re just a year old while I am six. I have years of experience on you, so I can tell you the truth. I had an owner that was even worse than yours. He’d beat me and starve me, for weeks. I couldn’t even go outside because he locked me in a very tiny closet. One time, he poured boiling hot water on me and even though I narrowly escaped being seriously scalded, my tail wasn’t so lucky. When he was confronted by his wife on his behaviour towards me, he simply said that in his traditional beliefs, cats were agents of bad luck and nine out of ten cats are possessed by demons and evil spirits.
I decided to run away, but the only way I could run away was if I jumped out through the balcony that was four storeys above the ground. I was a kitten of just six months, so I was so scared. One day, I decided to man up and do it. I’m sure you’ve heard of the sayings that “cats always land on their feet” and “cats have nine lives”. These two sayings were all I took along with me in this escape of mine. I jumped out of the window that day, but I sprained my ankle on landing. So no, cats don’t always land on their feet. The first few days on my own were horrible. I was starving, so I tried to join cliques of alley cats to at least get food and shelter but I got beaten and thrown out. I became an expert thief that could steal virtually anything without making the slightest sound. Long story short, I ended up in the refuse dump where I found shelter, food and warmth. The main lesson I learned in all of this? Mankind as a whole is pathetic and they can’t be trusted with anything,” Kofi said, hissing and grunting as he spoke.
Zuhrah watched as Kofi talked. She felt that Kofi’s ordeal was being replayed in his head as he spoke. He sounded so angry and hurt, and he had every right to be. His experience after he ran away was very similar to hers, only rougher. The only difference was that she wandered away from home out of naïveté, while Kofi’s situation demanded he run away from an abusive owner.