Chapter 1
Ekene The Boy is not feeling well this Saturday evening. His best friend Ebuka, whom everybody called Bukason, was found in a pool of his own blood early this morning at Ochanja Roundabout. Bukason had been declared missing for three days before someone who knows his father called and said he was staring right at Bukason's mutilated body in a place so unexpected as Ochanja.
Ochanja is a popular marketplace; how could Bukason’s body be dropped off there without anyone seeing who did it? Some said it could have been done at night when people no longer walked the road. But whatever was the case, Bukason's penis was gone and his eyes plucked out.
On that Wednesday that Bukason did not return home, Ekene The Boy and Bukason had been returning from school in the company of other students from St. Charles Secondary School. That late afternoon, Bukason had been walking at the same pace with Ekene The Boy along Modebe Avenue before a black Mercedes sedan pulled over by the road and a man's head peeked out the driver’s window and bellowed, “Ebuka!”
Bukason’s real name was Ebuka; Bukason was just a nickname. Bukason turned towards the voice. Ekene The Boy swung his neck too to look at the car, hoping that whoever was that driver, who happened to know Bukason, would give them a ride home. The distance between Fegge, where Ekene The Boy and Bukason live－or lived, depending on your perspective－and school is almost thirty minutes on foot, but Ekene The Boy and his friend Bukason would save their bus fare and walk the trip.
“That man must know me,” Bukason said to Ekene The Boy, smiling with pride that someone in a Mercedes knew him. Bukason saw the awe in the eyes of Ekene The Boy and the other students as they stared at the C-class, and boasted, “He is my uncle!” Bukason looked left and right and darted across the road to meet the man inside the Mercedes, whose head was still peeking out the driver’s window.
The fair Mercedes driver looked cool and handsome in his bald head and sunshades. Ekene The Boy and some other students, most of them classmates with Bukason and Ekene The Boy, stood and watched the driver grin at Bukason, and they exchanged murmurs of approval.
“Do you know how much they sell that car in the market?” said Ekene The Boy, his face pinched like someone who had been in the auto business for years. “It’s fifty million!”
“Fifty million is even small,” Odili countered excitedly.
“It should be up to eighty million!”
“Eighty million?” gasped Molete. “That’s very expensive!”
Ekene The Boy and his crew of admirers watched Bukason wave at them and walk over to the rear door of the Mercedes, which was already pushed open by another man who Ekene The Boy was seeing for the first time. Bukason spun on his feet, grinning with pride, and waved goodbye to his friends before he disappeared into the Mercedes.
So, I tell you, that’s about the story I heard from the grapevine about Bukason. Nobody saw him again since that day. I didn’t ask Ekene The Boy directly to tell me the story. I am a feral cat, so I hung around Ekene The Boy’s family apartment, hiding outside the living-room window ledge when Ekene The Boy narrated the incident to Bukason’s mother that Wednesday evening. Mama Ebuka had visited Ekene The Boy’s family house at Zik’s Avenue to inquire if Ekene The Boy knew about her son’s whereabouts.
Now, I’m watching Ekene The Boy sitting on a bench on their balcony, carrying his chin in his hands, tears rolling down his cheeks. The sun has disappeared down the eastern horizon and already I can hear a flurry of mice squealing behind me up in the cracked ceiling of a nearby crumbling one-story building. I’m a feral cat who doesn’t care much about mouse meat.
Two days ago, I eavesdropped on two domestic cats licking their snouts after a hunt and heard that mouse meat tastes like heaven. But I have my own meal preferences. Exotic, maybe. I love the good life.
My heart bleeds with sorrow as I watch a drop of tear after another hit the concrete floor where Ekene The Boy sits. He doesn’t know I’m watching him nor does he even know me at all. If you read about the history of my ancestors, we don’t find friends among humans; that’s for the house cats, those over-pampered creatures that only lap up milk and snuggle up human flesh for comfort.
But for us feral cats? We are the real deal. We don’t care about milk and the comfort of human flesh. We are soldiers of the wild. We kill. We maim. We tear. But I feel something towards this human boy crying his heart out on that balcony. Duh. Don’t you even ask me what I feel. Just mind your business.
Let me say this in pidgin: Feral cats no dey cast themsef.
