What's Wrong with Woodlee?

The cat has been behaving strangely.
He seemed weak and upset earlier this week and kept licking his chest.

 We called him over to investigate.  Instead of his usual haughty toss of the head and absolute scorn for any command we may deign to address to him, he hobbled sadly towards us, mewing plaintively. This was very out of character for Woodlee!

We laid him down gently - and discovered these terrible gashes on his chest area, oozing with a foul, sticky, white substance. We were both horrified and baffled. What on earth had happened to our cat?? And what was this stuff oozing out of the deep wounds? pus? maggots? worms? some internal body fluid?? You can never be too sure in Africa...there are a lot of bizarre medical things out there that I know nothing about, for people and animals alike!

We are still none the wiser. Poor old Woodlee now has a nasty-looking chest. He has licked away the fur, revealing the gashes with their mysterious, grim contents.

Thankfully, he seems to be improving, caring carefully for himself as he tends his own wounds. I'm happy that the nasty white stuff seems to have gone away after 4 days! Rather than sitting sadly in his basket and limping occasionally to his food bowl, he is up on his feet again. He even caught a lizard today and brought it to the window as a gift! He must be feeling much better...

If I had been in England, I would have taken him to the vet as soon as we realised what horrible injuries he had. But I know no vets in Juba! So Woodlee has had to do a good job of nursing himself, with our sympathy and some extra food treats to tempt him when he was down. Hopefully, he's now over the worst.
We'll probably never know what happened to him: did he fight with another cat? a mongoose (we think we have seen one lurking by the house at night)? a large bird (there are several birds of prey swooping overhead in Juba)? or ...??