#Randomosity: Cats and Dogs

We all know that it’s a popular stereotype and point of mockery that Ewes eat cats. Well, according to my grandfather, “It’s only the Anlos who eat cats. Where we come from, we don’t eat cats.” (For all of you who didn’t know, yes, I do have Ewe blood. There’s a short story behind my last name, which sounds Akan. Maybe that will be for another post.) “Hahahaha!” Grandpa continued, in the same tone one would use to say ‘tweaa!’ “The Gas are the ones who eat cats! They eat it more than the Ewes.”

I informed him that this is not what my friends believe. Then Grandpa told me two things.

1. One of my dad’s old friends (who is, by the way, not Ewe) frequently roasts cats at the back of his house and eats them with his family. He happens to live a short walking distance from my house.
2. Near Hinlone (the one in Cantonments), there used to be a bona-fide cat restaurant. Just to clarify, a restaurant specifically, exclusively, for cat meat. Run by who, you ask? Gas, that’s who.

In other news, the abandoned house next door to mine (which I MUST invent a story about), has, apparently, turned into a snake-harbouring jungle, after being left untended for so long. Now, the family got tired of all the snake infiltrations into our house, as well as the garage mice, so Grandpa went and bought two cats, to drive the snakes and rodents away. The cats were identical, and we named them Melinda and Belinda. In the time I went to South Africa and came back, one of the m went missing. Since we don’t know which one, we are conveniently calling the remaining cat “Linda.” Nobody is bothering to look for the other cat, because Grandpa is convinced that, since we live in a particular area where Ga cat-eaters and cat-restaurant owners live, she is residing, fully digested, in someone’s body.

One of the Lindas. I used her for my Art coursework

Incidentally, my grandfather recently read in the newspaper that the preferred meat among the youth of Ghana these days is dog meat. I am in no position to verify the credibility or statistics. I don’t even know. But Grandpa’s sister’s dog recently went missing, and nobody is bothering to look for that dog either.

Additionally, during my school’s last sponsored walk in Tema, I passed by a house where two people were roasting on a stick, a whole, intact, canine-looking animal. It was completely black and charred all over its outer body, but I could have sworn it was a dog.

-Your favourite non-cat-eating vegetarian,

Ivana