What is that smell? is usually not the first thing that I want to think about when I wake up, but the Wednesday after New Years I woke up to the undeniable oder of dead animal. A neighbor (?) had left the previous volunteer’s cat dead…and here is the creepier part…. With it’s feet cut off at my front door. It was 5 in the morning when I found it and I did what any other tough Peace Corps Volunteer would have done… went back into the house and locked the door. Maybe the body would wash away to someone else’s house, there was a sprinkle … or maybe someone would be so offended by the smell that they would take care of the body (okay embarrassingly selfish but I wouldn’t have complained)… or maybe the ants were feeling extra ambitious today and would consume the body entero by the end of the morning. In a state of denial, I putzed around, made breakfast, tried to read… but that smell (!)…. it’s something you just can’t ignore when you only have screens for windows. I needed to be an adult and buck-up and deal with the situation. But what do I do with it? I had some rocks, a broken hammer, ripped plastic, and some big sticks….hmm… pyre? The body could be dragged to some bushes and then the smell wouldn’t be so bad, and it would surely get eaten or disintegrate in no time, this is Africa afterall and the circle of life is strong here. I had a plan, a fail proof plan… now… where to drag the body? At first I though the backside of the house, nowhere near other neighbors and lots of bushes, but my bedroom window is right there so that was out (I am not risking any contamination in my room). There were those bushes to the side of the house, tall grass: good; upwind from the house: bad. Didn’t really look like any other spot would work.
The neighborhood came out to watch me move the cat onto plastic, chopstick style with big sticks. I studied biology and I’ve seen some pretty gross dead things… but this one really reached a new level of grossness. The cat had been poisoned and it’s body was horribly contorted. All four feet had been hacked off and the intestines were falling out of an incision on the torso. My stomach hurt, I gagged but really didn’t want to vomit in front of the silent watching crowd at the other side of the street. So awkward.
Sometime after I had pulled the cat to the bushes, a guy from down the street came by with a hoe and we dug a small hole for the body. Thankfully! Later he would ask if I wanted to enamorar with him… nothing puts me in the mood like dead cat, blech.
Since I was alone in the house and all (3 of ) my new friends were still away on New Years trips, I was especially freaked out. I stayed inside, I called Peace Corps and the school director:
. Ultimately it was explained to me that if someone killed my cow or my goat (this is a hypothetical… I don’t have any livestock at the moment) and left it at my doorstep it would be considered a threat. Apparently a cat doesn’t count because it’s not edible. Of course.
