Cats in Nigeria 1

Source: Cats & kitten local.ng

As a feline advocate, I fancy cats with no exceptions.

From their endearing and somewhat googly eyes, their cleanliness to their sometimes aloof attitude.

Where I am from, a lot of folks detest this furry animal. If you hate cats first ask yourself why you detest them so much, is it societal belief, or do you just hate them out of nowhere? Remember that, hatred always stems out of somewhere. 

Now that you have identified your reason for disliking cats, we can move further to why people hate cats, especially in my country -Nigeria. 

I call these misconceptions, because it is what it is, misconceptions about cats in Nigeria.

In the three major tribes of Nigeria, there is a dislike of cats due to some beliefs about them being used as a sort of channel by an evil spirit, therefore, making them demonize cats in general. From my conversations with some elderly, I discovered that the major misconception is the association of cats with the evil spirit.

The major belief that cats are can be possessed by evil spirits, one of the elderlies even sighted an example of what happened back in her village while growing up, the story seems straightforward, but the facts are questionable and there is not enough evidence so I cannot say how true or false the story is. The story tells of a woman who has a cat. One day, the cat went missing, she tried all she could but could not find the cat, after a week and a few days, she opened her door one morning and found the cat sitting outside the door, immediately she opened the door, she saw the cat and upon bending down to lift the cat, the cat sprang upon her, hissing and spitting at her, then clawing at her simultaneously. This caused the woman to withdraw and call for help after she was able to swat the cat away. She called a boy who lives a stone's throw away to come and help get rid of the cat because she now believes the cat is possessed, as the cat does not do that on a normal day. 

As it would go, the boy got hold of the cat and since it was believed that the cat is possessed, they had the boy kill and burn the cat. A few days later, the boy got sick, diagnosed with an incurable disease by the village doctor. Two days later, the boy died and everyone blamed the cat for his death.

As much as I would want to agree with the juicy story of how a boy died because he killed a cat as it seems like a karma result to me, I cannot believe it because I am a scientist and a zoologist for that matter. A lot of things could have gone wrong with the cat and the boy. 

Cats can leave their surrogate parent and live out as long as they can, and only return when they get bored of staying out or need the comfort the home could give them. During the cat's stay out, the cat could have been injured if he was a tom (male) while fighting for mating right with another tom over a female, or he could have been injured due to other circumstances and if the cat was a queen (female) she could have sustained some injury as well and while the woman was lifting the cat, she touched the cat's sore and the cat felt the need to attack. And as for the boy, he could have died of anything, him dying a few days after the murder of the cat is just a matter of coincidence, nothing more, nothing less, also back then, a lot of diseases were untreatable, so he could have died of any of this disease. 

According to Praizzzzwrites blog

"In the olden days, some animals signify an evil association like cats, snakes, and sometimes birds. Witches and wizards used these animals to send a message or possess them. Because of that people tend to be scared whenever they see those animals."

Contributing to this major misconception according to Praizzzzwrites blog is the country's movie-making industry "Nollywood". This industry has painted the picture of a cat as an evil incarnate in movies like "Ologbo Jigolo, Ologbo Iya Agba" among others.

Even with all the misconceptions, there are avid cat lovers out there in Nigeria, with a WhatsApp group chat, where discussions about cats go on day to day. There are also breeders, who breed cats only and there have been a lot of cat spaces on twitter some of which I have hosted and co-host.

In the next article, I will be writing about the reasons why you should have a cat rather than a dog as your household pet and some cool facts about feline creatures, but for now, this is all.