Bruce the cat, bless his heart, has become a ferocious killing machine. He left a headless bird in a heap of feathers on my second floor. Later Luca found a bloody baby mouse tucked behind some shoes. And dammit, I love him for it, because it means he can double as my protector and I can hopefully one day stop feeding him altogether.
Two nights ago I opened the front door to discover what looked like a crime scene. There was blood all over the front porch in streaks showing where some hapless animal was dragged back and forth and all around. It was a lot of blood! And it was streaked all over the porch area! Since it was after dark, I decided not to clean it or look for remains until the morning. Instead I just screamed in terror and then locked the door.
The next morning I went out to try to find the poor victim. I followed the trail of blood left, and right, and left again, and into the corners and tucked-away niches of the courtyard. But I found no body.
That night, Luca was telling the other Italians about what happened. "... so it was either the cat or some kind of fetish," he concluded. In French/Cameroon, a fetish is an item of bad luck or sorcery. For example, people with farms near the side of the road will hang fetishes, indicating that their farm is protected by some voodoo magic, to scare people away from stealing their crops. I'm sure Luca meant it as an offhand joke, but it got me thinking. Something here doesn't add up. Where was the body of the animal, after all? Anything that could produce that much blood is probably too big for tiny Brucey to eat in one sitting. "Plus," Luca pointed out, "the cat was white as ever without a drop of blood on him." Another good point - if he spent all night terrorizing a poor animal and making a huge mess in my courtyard, why did he remain spotless?
Now of course, I don't believe in sorcery. But all Cameroonians do. And I do believe that if someone is trying to scare us or perform black magic rituals on our house, that that can't be a good thing. So I thought more and more about the possibility. The gate was open at the time of the attack (not that that would matter to an experienced sorcerer). When I came home today, I noticed something else: a piece of red string tied to the bottom bolt of my gate. Actually I had half-noticed this weeks ago, and figured a red piece of clothing had gotten caught and lost a thread while I was walking out. But after stopping to think about it, I don't have any clothes that color. Also, tying a red string is a common type of fetish - around your corn stalk or bike means "steal this and you'll be cursed". Have we been targeted by a sorcerer for weeks and I only just realized?
Suddenly Lucas's off hand joke seemed like the only possible reality. Someone is trying to curse us. And after considering it, how did Bruce even kill that bird on the second story when there are bars and glass slats on the windows? He didn't drag it up because there were feathers only in that room. Could this be more sorcery? Could sorcery have caused the random spontaneous blisters that appeared on my body a week and a half ago with no explanation? Could it explain why all the produce we buy always seems to rot before we eat it? Or perhaps why my rosemary seeds never germinated last year? Or where the other earring in that one pair went?
So was it the cat or was it black magic? Well, I don't really know. I may never know the explanations for these strange occurences. But I can tell you one thing: I have never before so hoped that I live with a murderer.
*cue X-files theme music*
(The explanation for the title of this entry: "ju ju" refers to all things witchcraft and sorcery and those who control them. It is also, by no coincidence, what Valerie's 16-month-old daughter calls my cat.)
