Laylo......(cue guitar riff...)

We have a cat. He is called Laylo.

It wasn’t quite my intention to end up with a pet in Ghana. However, cat-sitting a very tiny kitten turned into looking after a slightly bigger kitten. Now the kitten adopter has left (thanks Vic!) we have Laylo. It’s not like Vic forced us to keep him – I for one was getting a bit attached anyway, so I/we decided to look after him for a wee while, only a small reason being that we were slightly concerned if he went to a Ghanaian family he might end up as dinner as their previous two cats had (both, ironically, named “Wish”).

Laylo is a slightly odd name for a cat, I know. Originally, Laylo was Layla, but after a visit from Laura, fellow VSOer and vet, we discovered his true sex. Now he is normally referred to as Laylo and him, though occasionally, also quite Ghanaianally, he is she. (Even people in the education office get he/she mixed up a lot of the time.)

Poor Laylo has made an enemy in our garden L. Godwin (our night watchman and the cause of many a trouble!) is keeping guinea fowl chicks and a hen in the garden (but a chicken hen, I think – apparently they often do that as guinea fowls aren’t good at looking after their own chicks). Laylo is terrified of the hen! She has the cheek to come and eat his rice, then looks at him with a bit of an evil look in her eye, squawks, spreads her wings and poor Laylo runs inside.

I keep explaining to Laylo that the “nasty hen lady” is a bird and really Laylo should just attack her, but my reasoning doesn’t work. Maybe I should try Frafra.

I explained Laylo the scaredy cat to a friend, who thought Laylo small pathetic – until she came face to face with said hen (we were trying to help a chick that she had left behind) so now she is in sympathy with Laylo. However, my main problem is that the hen keeps eating Laylo’s food. I’ve started to leave Laylo outside during the day, and kept coming back to a totally empty bowl – before discovering it was the nasty hen lady stealing the food. Then I made a barricade with the washing bowls so that she can’t chop Laylo’s food and knock over his water. That didn’t work as my barricade was pretty pathetic, so now his food is high high up and safe I hope!