Don’t mess with Legba

Legba's shrine, with his cane lying across the front

 

Last Sunday I prepared food and drink offerings for Legba and my Rada lwa, along with my ancestors. I left everything in their shrines overnight. While it’s easy to close the cabinet doors to protect most of their offerings from the curious paws of Luna, my young cat, Legba resides on the top of the cabinet and receives no such protection.

The cabinet is nearly five feet high and there are no chairs nearby, so usually Luna leaves it alone. However, Luna could smell the food and was intrigued. She waited until I left for work on Monday morning to attempt to scale the front of the cabinet.

Fortunately, nothing was broken or even knocked down, except for Legba’s cane, which was lying on the floor in front of the cabinet. Puzzled, I picked it up to put it back in the shrine when I noticed a clawed loop of thread sticking up from the tablecloth near the front edge.

Normally the cane lies across the front edge of Legba’s shrine, so when Luna attempted to grab onto the tablecloth, haul herself up and raid his cake, the movement of the cloth could have caused the cane to roll off the cabinet.

Either that, or Legba pushed it off. Not to hurt her, mind you, but just to teach her a lesson.

I think he scared her good. His cake was intact, and she has not shown any further interest in messing with his things.