Both of our dogs mad, the older one is a serious nut case, but we somehow love him and side with him despite his mistakes. He is currently healing a wound on his left ear which he got from his night trips. I always resort to amoxyll, the anti-biotic when the animals are sick and it works, somehow. He had a fever, my aunt gave him a painkiller and a sleeping pill and cleaned his wound. He is fine now, even though the past two weeks he has been scratching at the would, perhaps to prolong his convalescence to avoid the leash. When it dried up this week we had him on the leash, and he broke free the first few times, dragging along the leash and getting more bruises from his night trips. My neighbour said she’d poison him for eating his green maize. Tom, as we call him has two weaknesses. Eggs and green maize, fried; and he hunts for them, oh yes he does. So this morning, when I found an empty container of cooking fat, and a happy looking mongrel, I profusely regretted having left the kitchen door ajar. I’m going to get it from grandmother since I let the dogs out last night. I feel safer when they are running around howling in the compound, even though I know that wouldn’t prevent an elephant from walking across the house if he needed to, but at least bad guys won’t steal our cows or sheep while we are sleeping, to slaughter them a kilometer away.
Not far from home, someone’s cow was stolen in the night and slaughtered, leaving only the dirt from the intestines and the tail. And as the owner, an old widow picked up the tail and swang it about on her way home, the neighbours felt an urge to tear the thieves, if they were ever found, into little bits.
So Tom, when he’s not looking for eggs laid out in the bush, he’s eying which doors are open, so that he can grab a container of magarine or butter. The vet says it’s unhealthy.
A few days ago, the two dogs, Tom and Tusker ganged up to steal a baby rabbit. When my aunt approached, Tom ran off, but Tusker has something wrong with her head, she continued to eat the poor thing like it was legal food. She got grounded and was on the leash a few nights, and a porridge rationing. Tom tries to hunt the cats too sometimes, unsuccessfully. Tusker tries to play with them, they scratch her .
One of the cats who has a family of two not very cute kittens is having a difficult time providing for the family, since, well, grandmother sold the maize and the rats that had over populated have moved. She is not into the vegetarian food we give them. So she got a medium sized one from the store rooms , brought it to eat by the cow shed- a note about Sock, that’s her name, she’s black with white toes- she hangs out a lot with the cows, I think she identifies more with them. So you’ll find her relaxing with them after her meal. A few minutes later I saw a chicken running with a half potion of a rat, instinct had me chasing the hapless fowl with a stick round the compound. Chicken must have powerful lungs. It didn’t drop the ‘hunt’, I got tired and decided I’ll never eat an egg from socks anyway so the chicken might as well have it. Poor socks getting harassed by the chicken, maybe she should make a better budget when she decided to add on to the family.
