Of recent, it has been raining very heavily. The English would say it’s been raining cats and dogs. On reflection, this sounds very odd and got me thinking about the origins of such a saying.

Although there’s no definitive origin, there is a likely derivation. Before we get to that, let’s get some of the fanciful proposed derivations out of the way.

The phrase isn’t related to the well-known antipathy between dogs and cats, which is exemplified in the phrase ‘to fight like cats and dogs’.

Nor is the phrase in any sense literal, i.e. it doesn’t record an incident where cats and dogs fell from the sky. Small creatures, of the size of frogs or fish, do occasionally get carried skywards in freak weather.

Impromptu involuntary flight must also happen to dogs or cats from time to time, but there’s no record of groups of them being scooped up in that way and causing this phrase to be coined.

Not that we need to study English meteorological records for that - it’s plainly implausible. One supposed origin is that the phrase derives from mythology. Dogs and wolves were attendants to Odin, the god of storms, and sailors associated them with rain.

Witches, who often took the form of their familiars - cats, are supposed to have ridden the wind. Talk of rain and it propels me back into the past. Some decade’s ego, we used to go to the hills to graze.

In those days, the hills were all communal land and no body owned them. Have you ever imagined being caught up in the hills by rain, with no where to run?

We used to carry polythene bags as a rain proof wear, but if you happened to loose it (as was the case), you would have to endure the rains for many weeks before you could go back home to claim for a replacement. 

Some times we took shelter under the thorny bushes, but these were no match for the heavy tropical down pours. Those of us who had the fortune of owning pants, (I mean shorts), would get drenched by the rain such that, you would simply pee in your pants rather than take them off, what use would it be?

Taking off wet pants can be more problematic than peeing in them eh! Imagine being drenched by the rain to the bone, your fingers would be as numb as ice, for sure; you could not even undo the buttons, what alternative would you have?

After the rains, you are forced to herd the cattle towards home and by the time you get home, it is pitch dark and by hook or crook, the cows must be milked; by who?  You, of course.

As I put fingers to computer, the internet has just taken a nap, reason being, sijui the satellites providing Rwanda with internet have been cut off from their ground counterparts (VSAT dishes) and so, if this column does not appear, do not blame me, blame it on cats and dogs, blame it on the rain. 

Contact: Mfashumwana@fastmail.fm