THE CAT AND THE RAT
On the fourth night of the Alo Man’s stay, Nkunda was looking for her
cat. She had been feeling a little jealous that day, because Mpoko
and every one else gave so much attention to the dogs. It seemed as
if the cat too might be jealous, or perhaps the dogs were so proud of
themselves that they wanted the village to themselves, for Nkunda had
not seen her pet since the night before.
[Illustration]
Even the baby, rolling about in the doorway, had missed his playmate,
and he repeated Nkunda’s call, which sounded very like cat language. In
the Ki-sukama dialect of the Bantu language the cat is called Ca-ungu,
in the Ki-fipa dialect, Inyao, and in Isi-nyixa talk it is Unyawu; but
all these names sound like the little “miaou” that the cat makes when
she has something to show you, and this was the sound that came out of
the darkness in answer to Nkunda’s call.
The sound came from the direction of the granary. This was a building
planned very carefully for its special purpose. It was a large round
basket-work structure, plastered with mud and built on a floor raised
above the ground on short legs of forked branches. This floor or
platform was made in such a way as to keep out rats. Nevertheless,
now and then one would make an entrance, and as Nkunda came up to the
platform the cat leaped down, carrying in her mouth a large rat. It was
as if she wished to prove that she could take care of herself, whether
any one else remembered her or not.
[Illustration]
Nkunda called her mother and showed her what the cat had brought, and a
little crowd gathered about the granary. Purring proudly, the cat led
the way to a hole where the wall had crumbled from dampness or had been
gnawed away, and it was quite large enough for a rat to get in. If the
cat had not been so prompt in disposing of the thief, he and his family
might have gone to housekeeping in there; but as it was, little harm
had been done.
“The hole must be stopped up,” said Nkunda’s mother. “The rain might
get in and all the grain would mold, through a hole like that.”
“And we must have a rat hunt,” said Mpoko, coming up with his special
friend Nkula to look at the hole. “But we must make some new traps and
get our bows and arrows in order first. There will be no rats about
when we have finished with them!”
“That is all very well,” said Nkunda, stroking her cat; “but your trap
did not catch this rat and my cat did.”
The rat hunt took place, however. All the boys in the village came to
it, and it was a most exciting time. The farm rat of Equatorial Africa
is a rather pretty little brown animal with black stripes, and the boys
do their hunting with traps and their small bows and arrows. The traps
are made of basket-work and are cone-shaped. They are set in a group
in the middle of a large grassy space where there is reason to suppose
the rats are, and then the boys take their stand in a circle round the
edge of this ground and begin to walk toward the center, kicking up
the grass as they go, and shouting. The rats scamper toward the center,
where they are likely to run into the traps; but they have a habit of
starting to run and then stopping for a moment to look about, and this
gives the boys a chance to shoot them down with their small, sharp
arrows. Between the traps and the shooting a considerable number of
rats rewarded the hunters, and meanwhile the hole in the granary was
well patched up with wattle and mud.
Rats find a great deal that they like in an African village, and there
are usually plenty of them to be hunted by both cats and boys. The
people do not raise wheat, but they have other things that they eat as
we eat bread. Millet, barley, and maize or “mealies” are cultivated on
the farms and ground on stone slabs. The meal is made into mush or into
flat cakes baked before the fire like hoecake.
[Illustration]
The commonest substitute for bread is manioc or cassava, which was
brought from South America about four hundred years ago by Portuguese
explorers. The jungle people call it madioka. The making of manioc
flour is quite a long and troublesome piece of work. Nine months after
planting, the bulblike roots are pulled up and are soaked for a few
days in pools or streams. The fresh root is poisonous, and the soaking
takes out the poison. After this, the roots are peeled, cut in pieces,
and dried in the sun on small platforms or on stones. When they are
quite dry, they are laid on shelves over the fire until they are
brittle enough to be pounded and sifted and made into flour.
Another way of using manioc is to make kwanga, or native bread. For
this, the root is soaked as for making flour, but instead of then being
dried, it is kneaded to remove all lumps until it is a kind of dough
that can be shaped into rolls or round balls. After being moulded into
shape, the rolls are wrapped in large, smooth leaves and steamed until
they are cooked.
The taste of manioc prepared in this way is like that of tapioca. In
fact, the starch washed out of cassava roots, and dried and packed, is
the tapioca found in grocery stores. The fresh tapioca that is eaten in
a cassava country is, however, very much better than what is sold in
stores.
Kwanga is sold in markets at the rate of a shilling for fifty pounds,
and four pounds will last a man a day. When the men of the village went
on a trading journey, or into the forest to gather palm nuts or to cut
wood, they always took with them a supply of kwanga. The women had been
busy making some that very day, for there was to be an expedition down
the river which would start the following morning. This was why the
rat, in his corner of the granary, had been left to nibble and to gnaw
undisturbed.
While the cat enjoyed her well-earned supper, Nkunda sidled up to the
Alo Man. She had been thinking that perhaps it was as important to keep
the rats out of the grain as to keep the leopards away from the goat
pen.
“Is there a story about the cat?” she asked. “She knew that the rat was
stealing our grain when no one else did.”
“There is certainly a story about her,” said the Alo Alan. Then he told
the story which explains why the Cat and the Rat are enemies.
I often think [said the Alo Man] of the time, very long ago, when the
Cat and the Rat were friends and lived together on an island. It was so
long ago that they have both forgotten it, but they led a very happy
life. There were birds in the trees for the Cat to eat, and there were
nuts and manioc roots for the Rat to eat.
But nobody was ever so happy as not to want something more. One day the
Rat said, “I am tired of living on this island. Let us go and find a
village to live in. There you can have food without catching birds, and
I can have food without digging in the ground.”
“That will be delightful,” said the Cat. “But how are we to cross this
great water?”
“Nothing is more easy,” said the Rat. “We will carve a boat from the
root of a manioc.”
Then the Cat and the Rat dug up a large manioc root and began making it
into a boat.
The Rat gnawed and gnawed and gnawed with his sharp teeth, until he had
made a hollow large enough to hold the two friends. While he was busy
at this, the Cat scratched and scratched and scratched, to make the
outside of the boat smooth and to scrape off all the earth that clung
to the great root.
[“Look! look!” cried Nkunda, laughing, for her cat was standing on
two legs, scratching at a tree, just as if she wanted to show what
cat-claws can do.]
Then the Cat and the Rat [went on the Alo Man] made two little paddles
and started out in their boat.
It was much farther across the great water than it had looked from
their island. Also they had forgotten to put any food into the boat.
Presently the Cat began to say “Caungu! Caungu!” which means “I am
hungry! I am hungry!”
And the Rat said “Quee! Quee!” which means in his language “I am
hungry! I am hungry!”
But that did not do any good. They grew hungrier and hungrier. At last
the Cat said “Caungu! Caungu!” very faintly, and curled herself up to
sleep. And the Rat said “Quee! Quee!” very faintly, and curled himself
up also, at the other end of the boat.
[When the Alo Man made the Cat and Rat noises, the listeners made them
too, and there was a great deal of laughing. Nkunda’s own cat was
cuddled up in the little girl’s arms, her yellow eyes shining like two
little moons, and she seemed to know that this was her very own story.]
But while the Cat slept, the Rat stayed awake and thought. Suddenly he
remembered that the boat itself was made of manioc. He had eaten so
much while he was gnawing out the hollow that he had not wanted any
more for some time, but now he said, “Good! I will eat a little more
and make the hollow deeper.”
So he began--nibble, nibble, nibble!
“What is that noise?” exclaimed the Cat, waking at the sound.
But the Rat had shut his eyes and made himself as if he were fast
asleep.
“I must have been dreaming,” said the Cat, and she laid her head down
on her paws and went to sleep again.
The Rat began again--nibble, nibble, nibble!
“What is that noise?” cried the Cat, waking up.
But the Rat made himself seem to be fast asleep.
[Illustration]
“What strange dreams I have,” said the Cat, as she curled herself up
and went to sleep again.
Once more the Rat began to nibble very fast, and the noise awoke the
Cat.
“What is that noise?” asked the Cat.
But the Rat made believe to be sound asleep.
“My dreams are certainly very troublesome,” said the Cat, as she curled
herself up and went to sleep once more with her paw folded over her
eyes.
Then the Rat began nibbling again, and this time he gnawed a hole right
through the bottom of the boat, and the water began to come in.
“What is this?” cried the Cat, jumping up quickly.
“Quee, quee, quee!” squealed the Rat, perching on one end of the boat.
“Caungu! Caungu!” miaued the Cat, climbing up on the other end, for she
did not like the water at all.
“Quee, quee!”
“Caungu! Ca-ungu-u-u!”
“Quee, quee!”
“You did this, you wicked creature!” squalled the Cat.
“I was so hungry!” squeaked the Rat, and then the boat began to sink,
and there was no time for any more talk. They had to swim for their
lives.
“I am going to eat you,” said the Cat, glaring at the Rat as they swam.
“I deserve it,” squeaked the Rat; “but don’t eat me now or you will be
choked by the water. Wait until we reach the shore.”
“I will wait,” said the Cat, “but when we reach the shore I will
certainly eat you.”
At last they reached the dry land.
“Now,” said the Cat, “I will eat you.”
“I deserve it,” said the Rat, “but I am too wet to be good eating now.
Let me dry myself, while you dry your own beautiful coat. I shall be
ready when you are.”
They sat down and began to dry their coats. [Nkunda’s cat was licking
her breast and her coal-black paws and the fur of her striped and
mottled gray back with all the care in the world.] And the Cat [went
on the Alo Man] was so interested in making her beautiful coat quite
smooth and glossy that she did not see that the Rat was busily digging
a hole in the earth behind her.
“Are you ready?” asked the Cat at last, when every part of her coat was
dry and glossy and smooth.
“Certainly,” said the Rat, and he disappeared into the hole.
“You rascal!” cried the Cat, for the hole was only just big enough for
the Rat to dive into it.
“Quee, quee!” said the Rat from the bottom of the hole.
“You will never get out of that hole alive,” said the Cat. “I will stay
here and wait for you, and when you come out I will eat you.”
“What if I never come out?” said the Rat. “Quee, quee!”
“Then you can stay in that hole and starve,” said the Cat, and she
settled down in front of the hole with her nose on her paws and all
four feet under her, watching for the Rat to come out.
“Quee, quee!” said the Rat, in the hole, and he began to dig himself in
deeper.
All day long the Rat went on digging.
All day long the Cat watched beside the hole.
[Illustration]
When night came, the Rat had dug down under a tree root and had come up
on the other side of the tree, and he crept out of the other end of
his tunnel and went on to the village, while the Cat still watched at
her end.
From that day to this the Cat is never so fast asleep that she does not
hear the gnawing of a Rat, and she is never tired of watching for the
Rat to come out of a hole. And from that day to this the Rat knows that
if there is a Cat in the village where he goes to steal grain, he will
find the Cat waiting for him at one end or the other of his hole in the
ground.