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Cats indeed have nine lives



You may remember me telling you in this post that when I was schooling, I had a love for pigeons - and that despite complaints from my neighbours, I kept these free range birds.


One day, I noticed the number of birds were shrinking and I thought it was the neighbor who was snatching my birds.There were tell tale signs  of the birds’ feathers on the ground indicating the birds had put up a fight before succumbing. Besides the feathers there were no signs of the carcasses, which was puzzling.   After 2 or 3 days of observation, I realised the culprit was a neighbourhood cat which I saw descending from the cages sliding down the pole that propped up the cages - it had a bird in its mouth. A friend suggested that I roll a metal sheet around the pole that would dissuade the cat from climbing up the pole. But the cat was a smart one; he would crawl up the pole to the metal sheet and jump up on to the platform where the cages were placed and snatch the young birds. I followed up on other suggestions given by friends but nothing worked. I then decided to catch the cat and transfer him to a distant village. This worked for a few days until I saw the cat below the coop purring away with a satisfied look as if he had outwitted me. I decided that  It was then time for more drastic measures. I caught the cat using a “musang’ trap that is similar to a mouse trap but a lot larger. Having caught the cat I stuffed  him in a sack, went to the bridge over a stream and emptied the sack. 


It was then that I realised that a cat has nine lives. It landed on all fours and swam to the shore to wiggle and dry himself up. I saw the cat the following day trying to climb the pole leading to the pigeon coop. This time I wanted to make sure the cat would be lost forever. I stuffed him into a sack tied at the ends, went to the same bridge and threw it  into the water. A policeman on his rounds saw what I just did, suspected that I threw a body into the water and retrieved the sack with the cat struggling for dear life. He removed the cat and looked for me just as I was  running from the scene of the crime. He went away taking the poor cat with him. Anyway that put an end to the cat foraging for meals at my pigeon coop. 



All contents (c) Ganapathy Ramasamy, mynameisgana@blogspot.com


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