3-19 RIP Musashi

In January, we got a puskat. He was an adorable black kitten with blue eyes. Actually, he was a black-on-black tabby, which was just neat looking.

The story behind his appearance in our lives goes something like this: I’ve been wanting a cat since we got here. We need a good mouser and it is just nice to have a pet. I figured having a cat, we’d be less attached than having a dog (we nearly ended up with a dog anyway). After four months or so of asking around, I found out that there was a kitten in one of the neighboring villages. I went to ask about it and was promptly handed the kitten and told to take him home. I did. He cried about it the whole way home.

What I didn’t know at the time, was that the reason there was only one kitten was that he was a bush kitten. One of the youngfala went out “torching” crabs. (They carry a light “torch” and flash the ground. The crabs freeze and then they pick them up and stuff them in their baskets. I would really like to watch them try to keep the crabs in the baskets, but I haven’t seen that yet.) This youngfala torched a whole mess of crabs and in their midst was a kitten. The crabs and kitten all tried to scuttle into the crab hole. He dug back the rocks and in the process of getting to the crabs, pulled out the kitten, too.

As cruel humans, we even bathed him.

After about a week of debate, we named him Musashi. We figured we’d give him a name suited to killing things in hopes that he would be a good mouser. We were considering Sun Tzu but I realized I didn’t want an army of rats, I wanted no rats.

Earlier this week, we found him dead. The cause of death is a little unclear. He might of strangled while trying to get out of the house, through a hole he normally used. He had grown too big. That hypothesis doesn’t quite fit because he should have cried or figured out how to get his head back. At the very least, it seems strange that a hole that he could previously walk through was suddenly too small for him to breath through. No matter what the cause, he was still dead and we are both sad.

I hope he had a happy six weeks with us. I know we tried very hard to give him a good life. I’m sorry it was so short.

Our adorable shoulder kitty is sadly missed

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