..a cat story..

..do cats mourn their dead?.. I've heard of elephants..but cats..?..no.. I don't think they are capable of such profound feelings..being mainly selfish creatures, cats just love to curl up on laps whilst purring contently away to gentle strokes and rubs..

..until one day this old coot was proven otherwise..cats do mourn their dead..our favorite tabby, Ayam does..she just showed it to me this morning..and it leaves this sentimental old geezer in tears...

..it is common knowledge that Ayam had a thing going with Bobi, our neighbour's handsome tom..they were often seen frolicking in some corner of the garden..being just cats, their pairing does not raise an eyebrow..our neighbours joked about it..that their tom is spending more of his time in our compound then theirs..cats in love, I said, to everyone's amusement..

..a week ago, Bobi died.. from mysterious causes.. tongue jutting out and surrounded by faeces and urine..the owner, a lady principal at one of the town's secondary school, and her 16-year old daughter were gutted...they had him buried on a vacant lot next to their house..her daughter marked the grave with a leftover piece of floor tile..

..a few days later we noticed that Ayam is acting a bit strange..on being let out of the house in the wee hours of the morning as I opened the door for morning prayers, Ayam did not return for breakfast as she normally does..ditto for lunch..she went missing during the day..returning only in the evenings as I leave the house for Magrib prayers..

..she is always seen around our house, said the neighbours..she is missing Bobi, they jest..and we all laughed...

..until this morning, when I let her out of the house.. I decided to tail her..see where she goes.. she walked softly through the small back gate..stopping every now and then..looked around..saw me following and meowed softly at me..she knows where she is going..and so I followed her with my eye, as she crossed the road and stop ontop of where they had Bobi buried..she paused for a while..rubbed her head at the marker tile..and sat on the grave..

..she was lost in quiet reverie as this coot was lost in unfathomable feelings..my neighbour called out from her bedroom window..and this old coot cried..

..as I left her there to send my children to school, I could feel the tears running down my cheeks..

..she was no longer there when I came back..a quick search found her on a ledge of my neighbour's home..I hugged her as I carried her home..this cat mourns her dead..and this coot cried for her..