The Amazing Life of Cats (12 page)
‘No,’ he smiled, ‘he’s a
randagio
—a stray. He comes by most mornings on his rounds. He doesn’t beg, he just suggests.’ We had learned an important new word:
randagio
. This as opposed to ‘
libero
’, ‘free’, which we’d learned in Abbruzzo in reference to dogs whose owners let them roam. A cat, after all, unless imprisoned, is by nature
libero
.
We ordered a
prosciutto cotto
(cooked ham) and
provolone panino
(cheese roll) for our furry friend. ‘He prefers the
prosciutto crudo
(air-cured ham),’ said our waiter. ‘It costs the same.’ We went for that. The young tom ate all the filling and half the roll, wound briefly around our legs purring in gratitude, then trotted off with his black-ringed tail held cheerily high. We never saw him again.
We took to carrying bags of dry food with us on walks, because we sometimes saw desperately skinny cats—sick kittens, despondent old cats, starving feral cats barely surviving on village outskirts—who fled when anyone approached. In a country so recently mostly rural there lingers a diehard peasant attitude that cats should fend for themselves, as if there are granaries crawling with mice down every street. Many farm cats are still allowed to breed and breed, and unwanted litters are tossed in the local river—as was common in the American countryside until not long ago.
Italy actually provides free desexing for feral cats, but technically they must be members of a cat colony—and here’s the rub—‘inside the walls’ of the town or community. That leaves all country cats out of the system; desexing costs between 100 and 150 euros, which amounts to a bundle for anyone who’s inherited a barnful of cats.
It’s certainly not that Italians care less for animals than we do. Keep in mind that traditional urban Italian living spaces tend to be upstairs, tiny by Australian or American standards, without front or backyards, with doors that open directly onto streets—not ideal for cats. Yet I keep meeting people here who happily share their homes or modest property with any number of rescued cats. In the States there are so many abandoned cats (and dogs) that the shelters can’t hold them all, and unadopted animals are killed to make space for new ones.
In Italy, itself no stranger to human hunger and homelessness throughout its history, letting stray cats live free and according to their individual luck and pluck is one viable solution. The
gattara
tradition is one way that a culture often torn by war and want has coped compassionately and respectfully with the problem of strays.
It’s the nature of the
gattara
to help and to feed, the fate of the
gattara
to love and to lose. We have—and, yes, I am proud to say that I am now a
gattara
—no illusion of ownership or control over the lives of strays, though we do our best to trap and desex them, nurse the sick and wounded, build shelters, bury the dead. Strays come, they disappear, with luck they may return; ideally they find homes. They often show up ill, abused, abandoned, scarred and scared. Some we get close, too, giving them names, petting them, maybe someday taking them home. On the other hand, we may feed a traumatised cat daily for years and never get within touching distance. Bad cats, marauding toms or hissy-fit alpha queens are a minuscule minority. Grant them peace from harassment, food to keep from starving, freedom to hunt, a spot in the sun and shelter from the rain and cold, and admire the miracle of stray cats’ independence and resourcefulness, their capacity for playfulness, gratitude and affection, their fortitude, beauty and high self-esteem despite all odds. They do not whine about their lot, nor lick a hand that hits them, nor feel obliged to suffer the touch of those who feed them. What they give us back for our efforts is pure gold.
The
gattara
reveres and wisely emulates those she cares for. Not too emotionally needy, or our hearts will be broken again and again, we operate instinctively on the fringes of society. We seek the shadows of night and early morning, knowing there are those who do not wish us or our charges well: the bullies who stamp and hiss at strays, the spoilers who toss their fag ends into water bowls, the evildoers who drop off a
polpettino di morte
—the tempting ‘meatball of death’, a poisoned treat. For these we reserve the
gattara
curse:
May they never find their way home.
Mara Seer
W
hen God made the world, He chose to put animals in it, and decided to give each whatever it wanted. All the animals formed a long line before His throne, and the cat quietly went to the end of the line. To the elephant and the bear He gave strength; to the rabbit and the deer, swiftness; to the owl, the ability to see at night; to the birds and the butterflies, great beauty; to the fox, cunning; to the monkey, intelligence; to the dog, loyalty; to the lion, courage; to the otter, playfulness. And all these were things the animals begged of God. At last he came to the end of the line, and there sat the little cat, waiting patiently.
‘What will
you
have?’ God asked the cat.
The cat shrugged modestly. ‘Oh, whatever scraps you have left over. I don’t mind.’
‘But I’m God. I have everything left over.’
‘Then I’ll have a little of everything, please.’
And God gave a great shout of laughter at the cleverness of this small animal, and gave the cat everything she asked for, adding grace and elegance and, only for her, a gentle purr that would always attract humans and assure her a warm and comfortable home.
But he took away her false modesty.
From The Cat’s Pajamas, Leonore Fleischer
If you shamefully misuse a cat once she
will always maintain a dignified reserve
toward you afterward. You will never get
her full confidence again.
Mark Twain
O
ne spring day some years ago I went to the local veterinary clinic to pick up the pound cats that had just arrived. They had all been vet-checked and were ready to start their new lives as shelter cats with a future. There was one, a ginger cat, though, who just sat there in a carrier and looked very unhappy. The nurse hovered around me and then the vet came out to see me about this old ginger cat. He told me he didn’t think I should accept her for my shelter as she was old, bad-tempered and ugly!
Okay, she was all that, but these comments made my protective feelings rise to the surface. I asked the vet to desex her, vaccinate and microchip her. He gave me a look but I’d got used to those looks a long time before and so I simply shrugged.
I went back the following day to pick her up to find the vet extremely excited about my new old ginger cat. This cat presented as a female with ovaries and a uterus but she also had a fully grown set of testicles in her groin! The vet discovered this as he performed the desexing operation, noticing that despite being rather old she had never given birth to kittens. Wondering why, he looked further down and found out exactly what the problem was. My new cat was a hermaphrodite.
I took the cat home. As she was rather angry and upset I put her in the room where we kept the firewood. I went to the kitchen to get some food for her, then went back and opened her door, and this snarling, hissing and screaming creature just flew at me. I don’t remember how I got her off me but I was left with some scratches and a badly shaken ego. For the next few months she kept up the hissing and snarling; during this time I changed her water and litter tray and gave her food every day, talking to her while I avoided looking at her.
Then one day—four months later, actually—Ginger, as I had of course called her, came to meet me at the door, purring and circling my legs. I had to look around because surely this wasn’t the same cat—but no, it was the monster cat who had undergone a complete personality change!
I eventually let her out of the firewood room, and allowed her into the shelter building where she mingled with the customers and loved to sleep in front of the fires. Parents used to park their kids with her while browsing and Ginger carefully babysat them—she loved kids; most of the time, though, she was wherever I was, which was usually behind the counter. She shared my lunch—she loved broccoli with melted cheese, so that’s what I had most days.
Ginger loved a stroll in the garden after we had closed and then at seven pm it was time for bed. Her door was always left a tad open during the day so that she could come and go, but punctually at seven she was asleep in her bed. I would pat her goodnight, close the door, and know that she was safe throughout the night.
This wonderful cat came from the Puckapunyal army base and I often wondered how she had lived before being trapped. No one could touch her: she hated the world, she hated people, she hated everything until her hormones finally settled down due to her desexing and the removal of her extra pieces.
I had the honour of knowing and loving Ginger for almost four years until she succumbed to cancer of the mouth. Ginger left a paw print on my heart that will be there until the day I die. She now rests in a little box on my mantelpiece together with other pets I have owned; one day we will be together again. RIP, Ginger.
Ingrid Arving
Cats as a class have never completely
got over the snootiness caused by that
fact that in Ancient Egypt they were
worshipped as gods.
P.G. Wodehouse
