CHAPTERIVTHE CAT AND THE RATOnthe 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.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 wasthe 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.cat stalking ratNkunda 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 fora 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 thisground 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.cat with rat in its mouthThe 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, isthe 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, andshe 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.cat sleeping in row boat“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 notime 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.cat waiting at rat holeWhen 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 otherend 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.
Onthe 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.
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 wasthe 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.
cat stalking rat
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 fora 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 thisground 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.
cat with rat in its mouth
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, isthe 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, andshe 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.
cat sleeping in row boat
“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 notime 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.
cat waiting at rat hole
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 otherend 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.