Nigerian Catnip

I think this is what I am. Another one has appeared at our door. She arrived in our compound on Friday night. She must be lost as she seems well looked after, tame, and very affectionate. And very very hungry. I’ve been feeding her morning and night – Squirt won’t be impressed, her cat food supply is fast depleting. I think the people on our compound think I am insane. We came in late on Friday night (Saturday morning really) and she was howling outside, so our security guard found me curled up on our outside stairs in my pyjamas at 5am with the cat on my lap. He just shook his head at me, smiled in a sad sort of way (as if to say “poor girl, she’s clearly insane but no one has the heart to tell her”) and went back into his room. Then last night I was trying to get her settled in a box in an area underneath our stairs, so that she could have somewhere quiet and dark to sleep, as she just seems to be roaming around endlessly at night howling. The person that lives in the flat next to where I was came home to find me bent over some old boxes in a dark corridor, seemingly talking to myself (the cat disappeared when he walked up). He asked what I was doing, but I didn’t want to admit to harbouring a stray cat outside his front door, so I just said “nothing, just looking for something.” So he also gave me a strange look and went inside.

It’s not just the people in our compound who think I’m insane either; it’s potentially our entire neighbourhood. I’ve been trying to find who she belongs to, so I’ve put her photo on Abuja expat sites and mailing lists, and I got the vet to put a poster up in his surgery. I printed some posters out, and begged another (very kind) volunteer to come with me to stick them up. Potentially the most embarrassing two hours I’ve had since arriving in Nigeria. People just could not understand what we were doing. Half the problem was that the poster was in English, and most of the people we encountered could only read/speak Hausa, so trying to explain what the poster said was a nightmare. At one point a man at the market said “Ahaaaaaa” and I thought finally, someone understands, and then he said “you want to sell the cat?” Noooooooo!!! So the search for her owners continues. I’m trying to be practical, it’s bankrupting me just taking one cat home with me, let alone two. So I can't take her into our flat as it would be cruel to get her settled knowing that I'll have to leave her behind in a few months time. Squirt seems entirely disinterested in the whole thing, even when she can hear Cat 2 howling outside she doesn’t bat an eyelid. She’s obviously worked out she’s on the right side of our front door.

So if anyone wants to adopt a lovely Nigerian cat, please let me know. I’ll even throw in a couple of tins of top quality Nigerian cat food.