Raid Insecticide Presents another episode of: Life in the Bush

3/12/11

So yesterday I was tidying up the house in preparation for a visitor.  This exercise includes the magnificent (but fortunately brief) task of scrubbing the latrine seat.  This unpleasant task done and based on the last few days' observation, I decided to complete the further unpleasant task of Operation: Cockroach Annihilation.  Since few alternative options, few tools (including lack of traps), and little know-how on my part exist here, the roach genocide has taken this form:  either a powder or spray insecticide is put inside the latrine (aka pit hole toilet) in the hopes that it might kill some on contact.  However, rather than suffer and die in the comfort of their favorite hidey-hole (my latrine) they opt for a mass exodus, where instead, they meet a slow death by broom--and possibly ants.  So, on the rarest occasions humanly possible, one can come through the compound door and observe me in a whack-a-mole competition (hand-held Ghanaian broom aloft) with God's most disgusting creatures shouting "Die roach die!"  They are then swept into the garden to be transported to an unknown location by the ever present Ant Army. 

However, between the insecticide introduction and the mad escapre runs of the cockroaches, some few minutes passes.  As I was occupying myself with another task, I heard a desperate flap of wings and saw the cat run out of the latrine room.  Surprise was my first reaction--Starbucks likes bugs (usually spiders and crickets and dragonflies) and lizards, but never before a cockroach.  Second thought was Damn!  Why didn't didn't you do this the other times cockroaches have appeared?  Maybe you're having some weird cat-pregnancy cravings?  Surprise then led to--Oh shit! That roach probably has insecticide on it!  But by that time, she'd already gobbled it up, cuz, you know, my thoughts are rather slow.  Now I have grown to really like this cat.  She's a lot like my Boo! in affection, temperment, and company, but a vastly more accomplished hunter (not hard to do), and now I was honestly afraid that what she just ate might kill her.  So sat for a moment oscillating between "do something" and "am I overreacting?"  So after a minute or two of this, I called my friend Tricia, a volunteer in the next town, a fellow Ghanaian cat owner and a nurse too.  The Conversation went a little like this:
--Hey, how's it going?
--Good, you?
--Pretty good. Hey, you ready for silly question?
--Sure, shoot.
--How do you induce vomiting in a cat?
--(And without hesitation) Salt.  Or salt water.  Just force it down her throat.
--Great.  Thanks.
--Sure.
Okay, well it went a little longer than that, but you get it.

So I mixed up some salt water and spent the next hour chasing the poor cat around the compound with various combinations of a cup, a spoon, an eye dropper, and a two-yard (a fabric--blanket-like, you know, for wrapping a struggling, panicky cat in) and trying to force-feed her salt water.  And after all that--copious amounts (well it felt like it) of salt water, and undeserved aggravation, I only succeeded in making her very thirsty.  The cat never vomitted and she didn't die.  So I am either the owner of Mutant Super Africa Cat or there was little to no insecticide on the cockroach.  AND dear Starbucks bears no ill will, so either she has a very forgiving nature or just no memory.