Memoirs of a Worker

Some Cats do Interesting Things

This is dedicated to all the cat lovers out there! I will post a new story every Monday. Have fun reading, Lloyd

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I have never been a cat person (most likely a trait I inherited from my mother), although it’s possible that I may have touched a couple of cats in my day. We (my family and I) have even owned a few cats over the course of the years, or perhaps the cats just allowed us to be in their space for short periods of time, I’m not actually sure how all that works with cats.

Cats are interesting critters though and quite entertaining to tease, if you have a piece of string or a laser pointer. They both work and are both harmless ways to harass cats.

One of the ultimate ways to pester felines is a way I observed on the royal grounds in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Haile Selassie, the “Lion of Judah,” and also the last emperor of Ethiopia, lived in the picturesque palace before he was deposed and executed by the treacherous Mengistu in the 1970’s.

I worked in Addis Ababa at the American embassy during the Ethiopian civil war when Mengistu and his forces were defeated in the 1990’s, by three highly trained armies of local Ethiopians (that the press referred to as rebels). I witnessed some of the battles in and around Addis Ababa, and they were fierce. When the war ended, the generals of the three armies met on neutral ground (somewhere in Europe, I don’t quite remember where) and wrote up a constitution and formed a new government.   

When peace was fully restored and a sense of normalcy returned, the new government invited the people who worked at the US Embassy to tour the royal palace and grounds.

The palace was lavish, massive, and magnificent!  The tour lasted for a couple of hours or so, and finished in what I believe was called the “reception room.” In this room was a huge elevated throne, made out of pure gold, with a plush crimson velvet seat and back. When the tour guide asked if I would like to sit on the throne and have my picture taken, I jumped at the chance. It was clear to me the tour guide knew that I was a “blue blood,” (from 20 or so generations back, anyway)!

One of the rooms in the palace had piles of different kinds of animal skins. An overabundance of the skins, were from lions. It was interesting but I didn’t get the point of all the dead skins and the tour guide had no reasonable explanation either.

Emperors, kings and dictators seem to exist on a different scale than how the average person lives. For instance, Halie Selassie had his own private zoo at the palace. Mengistu continued on with the zoo after he assassinated the emperor and occupied his home. Dictators are like that you know, they complain about the lavish lifestyles of those they depose, but soon embrace the lifestyle and then carry it to even higher extremes, Mengistu was no different.  

The palace zoo was a pretty good one, far superior to the public zoo downtown in Addis Ababa. I suppose by having your own private reserve, an emperor or dictator could avoid the throngs of potential gawkers, would be assassins and autograph seekers, that there would be in a public setting and still have a zoo-like experience.

Upon my arrival at the royal zoo, I heard some terrible, hair raising, spine tingling roars! For a moment I was worried that some lions had escaped, and frankly, I was apprehensive about proceeding to where the sound came from. I purposely held back and waited. I wanted to see if any of the other people who were touring the grounds would come rushing back in my direction with a ferocious lion on their tracks. Nothing like that happened, I am happy to report.

As I hesitantly made my way towards the sound, I was immediately able to spot the source of agitation. One of the animal care takers was tormenting the lions, especially targeting one ginormous beast. The worker had a piece of wood, about 2 feet long and a couple of inches in diameter, and would rub it back and forth across the steel bars of the lion enclosure which made a terrible racket.

The “king of the beasts,” didn’t care for the noise the wood made and would charge and lunge against the bars in an attempt to attack the caretaker. The lion would then reach one of his front legs through the bars in an attempt to snag the worker with his razor sharp claws. The worker stood just inches away from the reach of the lion’s paws and would mock and insult the lion. During the harassment session, the lion would give a frightening roar that would make the hair on the back of my neck stand straight out.

When the lion would slam into the metal bars (which was often), I got really nervous. I could visibly see the bars move, what appeared to be several inches, and I wasn’t in the mood to tangle with an offended lion (although I thought if the lion got out and devoured the caretaker, that it probably would have been justified on the part of the lion).

It was clear to me that the employee wanted to be in the lime light by the way he showed off to all us tourists. As soon as the lion retreated, he would do all sorts of dance moves and call out insults to the lion and then spin around and bow to the audience and then continue with persecuting the lion.

The lion roared louder than before and rushed at the man; the man withdrew one step, turned his head and smiled to the audience, but the lion changed his tactics this time and stopped just short of the bars. He spun around and slammed his behind into the bars and sent out a spray of urine that was almost unending! The man hadn’t noticed, since he was showing off to us sightseers. He turned his smiling face towards the lion at the same time the gallons of pee drenched him from head to foot, including his wide open mouth!

We clapped and cheered…for the lion. When the spray started the man instinctively doubled over. I presumed it was an attempt to get out of the pee, but it didn’t work, it just kept coming. It was like it was never ending, and the lion had a real good aim! I figured the cat must have saved up for a week!

When the shower ended, the tormentor ran his hands over his face and then started spitting and coughing violently. The lion gave one last triumphant roar, as if to say, “Serves you right,” and sauntered to the back of the cage.

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