Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Most mornings in Addis, as the early morning sun crept up hot into the sky, I watched as this little feline hopped from metal roof top to metal roof top.  I wonder still that it didn't singe its paws.

There are sooo many roaming animals in (and out) of Addis.  I was so astonished the first time I saw a whole herd of goats trotting in unison (with no one to shepherd them) across a main street in Addis.  What??? I thought.  Goats in the middle of the city...hmmm.  I wish I'd thought to take a picture of them, but I was too surprised; all of the other times, they were simply too fast for me to have time to pull out my camera.  Of course, the goats were just the tip of the iceberg.  In addition to those little billies being everywhere: mules wandered about by the thousands, including the one that near knocked me off my pins; wild-seeming and noisy dogs that we stayed far away from barked incessantly, especially during the night; and cows (yes, cows) and oxen (the ones with the long, curved horns) lumbered about, stopping traffic - there was a time halfway up Entoto mountain when a couple of these bovine got a little too curious for my comfort...thought for a few minutes that I was going to lose a few body parts to a pair of those horns.  You name the creature, it could probably be found wandering the streets inside and out of Addis.  Roosters, you ask?  Certainly... including the one that woke me up a few times in the middle of the night. Lots of chickens, too.  Camels, too, you ask?  Absolutement.  But surely not horses, you plead?  Yes, even a few of those, too.  Shocking, isn't it?  I'm almost surprised that the authorities bother to keep the lions penned in at the Lion Zoo...though, not having visited there yet, I guess I'm making an assumption.

Anyway, though I wish I'd taken waaaay better pictures of the animals (especially of the mules and goats), they are worth a nod in my recounting of our time in Addis.

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This bunch of cattle looks nicely contained in the field, but there was nothing stopping them from crossing the road (or stopping on it) whenever they wanted to...and they did.

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We had to come to a rather fast stop for this fellow, determined to find grass in the middle of the road.

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This is a rather pathetic picture of the goats...this was such a small grouping of them in comparison to the two or three dozen that we would commonly see running around together.

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Yes, even camels wander the countryside outside of Addis...though I also saw them going up Entoto mountain, right at the outskirts of the city.

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Seems to me you're on the wrong side of the fence, buddy.