SUNDAY SAUCE - Of mongrels, pusses and dawgs

Oxy Moron, Contributor

There is an African proverb that says when the elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled. Back here in Jamaica, we say, 'Cockroach no business inna fowl fight.' And that's why I remain silent in the mongrel dog and lion-hearted cat debate, otherwise called puss and dawg cass-cass.

So, while everybody was jumping around as children would in a schoolyard fight, cheering on their favourite, I stood far and wide, looking on nonchalantly at what did not concern me, Oxy Moron. I generally have absolutely no interest in cats and dogs, and I tell you why.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS

Dogs are frowsy, and I am NOT going to bathe any dog - mongrel or pedigree. Moreover, you could pay me a million dollars, but I am not going to clean up any canine excrement. And talking about crap, there's one quality that pusses have over dawgs. They cover their mess, although they do so because they rudely believe we humans would mistake it for sugar plum. And that is the thing about cats I detest most.

They have this I-am-better-than-you air about them, which I find rather insufferable. I feel the same about their sometime-ish temperament. One moment they are brushing against you, purring and seeking your attention, the next moment they are baring their claws, scratching and hissing at you.

But don't get me wrong, I don't have 'pussphobia' like the woman who screamed horrendously one rainy day when a 'stray puss' kitten sought refuge in her apartment. She was the one who coined the term, not I, Oxy Moron. I am brighter than that. The word is ailurophobia.

Yet, I must admit that I am cynophobic. I am terribly afraid of dogs, the vicious and unsightly looking devils such as the ones the people in Mona Heights have in their yards while their gates are wide open. There creatures, gut-wrenching, throat-grabbing status symbols, that their owners masquerade under the guise of pedigrees are actually mongrels, for the most part. Crossbreeds they are.

And throughout the canine and feline brouhaha, despite my penchant for minding my own business, I have been thinking of the word, mongrel, and I reflected on something Mama told me years ago. I might just be a mongrel myself. I, who have always thought I am an African pedigree all along, might just have Caucasian blood running through my veins.

She said my paternal grandmother, whom I have never met, was brown, brown, with brown yeye and her hair was long like a River Mumma's. I was stunned. Yet, I took comfort in the fact that I don't just have the African look, I am DHEE look. I may be a black mongrel, but I am not a dog, and as I've said, I really don't care for dogs, especially after what I heard a woman say the other night.

She was driving home when she saw a dog running scared and when she looked to see what the matter was, the dawg was being chased by a puss. And I said to myself, trying to hold back my laughter, that must have been the lion-hearted puss that everyone has been talking about, and I also wondered whether the dog was a mongrel.