The Great Sicilian Cat Rescue Page 3

  The present cathedral stands on layers of pagan temples. It is an example of the sacred/profane aspect of Sicily, where pictures of the Virgin Mary stand cheek by jowl with rings to ward off the Evil Eye. Religious festas may start off with the parade of an effigy – Saint Pancrazio, patron saint of Taormina, for example – but the day finishes up in carousing.

  We stared at the front of the cathedral and tried to imagine what it must have looked like as the Doric Temple of Athena: magnificent, stuffed with art treasures, the golden shield of the warring goddess reflecting the sun’s rays. I had an even stronger sense of the past, of violation and blood, as we stood before the Altar of Hieron 11, where the guidebook told us 450 bulls were sacrificed to Zeus in a day.

  While Andrew went to order beers, I sat at a cafe table and thought of feral Lizzie. What a relief it was to have escaped for a day. I hadn’t realised how difficult it would be to keep her closed up in the apartment. She had soon released herself from the Elizabethan collar Giulio had put on her; all she wanted was to be out roaming free.

  I don’t think any cat is wholly domesticated. One interesting thing I’ve learned in my ongoing dialogue with my cat Sheba is that cats lead a double life. In the house she is an overgrown kitten, gazing up at her human owners. Out on the tiles she’s her own boss, a free-living wild creature. The moment a cat manages to persuade a human being to open a door she is off and away without a backward glance. While a dog might look back to see if the human pack mate is following, not so the cat. Her mind has floated off into a totally feline world, where two-legged creatures don’t exist. Cats have the dual capacity to evolve and revert to atavistic principles. In Lizzie’s case she had never known a home, a warm hearth, and food put in front of her. Her life was spent in watchful survival. Was it any wonder she considered me her captor?

  I glanced at my watch; I had an image of Lizzie and felt anxious: should we go back?

  It had been comparatively easy to get to Syracuse but, as so often happens in Sicily, it turned out to be much more difficult to return. There was a two-and-a-half-hour wait for the next train. We resigned ourselves and went to sit in the station cafe. I drank a cheap but good red wine at a few liras a glass, while Andrew had a beer. It was obviously the local bar. At a neighbouring table a group of men played cards. Every now and then one of them shouted out ‘Scopa!’ It took me back to winter evenings in Taormina’s Arco Rosso bar.

  I’d sit in a corner, nursing a glass of wine. I’d watch the groups of men crouched over cards fancifully designed as knights on horseback, swords and daggers, goblets, sheaves of corn and golden coins: the Sicilian game Briscola. Hawkish eyes would follow every card as it was thumped down until someone shouted ‘Scopa!’

  Sitting in that bar, I used to wonder what on earth I was doing there. A vision of Brighton would rush into my mind, the flags flying straight out in the breeze that never really drops, my mother waiting alone in the seafront flat. After a few months I had to go home to see her; the cord between us was never truly broken.

  Just as we were getting quite merry on the local brew, we realised our train had arrived while we’d begun to enjoy ourselves in this shabby little station cafe. Sicily is like that. Within hours you can begin to imagine yourself thinking: OK, we’ll stop here and find a pensione. If you did stay, I would bet that within days you’d enter into the domani domani mentality. D.H. Lawrence was right, the South does cure you of caring.

  It was one of the dreaded locale trains, which scarcely get up speed before they start to slow down for the next station. They’re pretty stations hung with baskets of trailing geraniums, but there are far too many of them.

  About fifteen minutes out of Syracuse, a young man got on; he wore the latest in designer jeans and an Inter-Milan sports shirt, an Italian computer magazine tucked under his arm. At first sight I’d put him down as one of a new breed, which had broken the habit of living at home until the age of forty. This was an Italian man who’d struck out on his own. Then I noticed the bulging plastic bags he deposited gently on the seat. Ah! I knew those bags. I’d come across them on many a journey in Italy: cornucopias of food, every type of delicacy, from chicken fragrant with rosemary, pots of aubergines and tomatoes sott’olio, whole cheeses and salami. They represented La Mamma’s obsessive fear that her child might face famine during the journey, or not find the quality food he was accustomed to.

  The young man made himself comfortable and opened his magazine. We settled back with our books.

  ‘Soon be home,’ Andrew said. ‘Shall we eat out tonight?’

  But the train didn’t move. Another five minutes and it remained stationary, not a whistle for departure, not a judder… nothing. Giovanni or Stefano, or whatever his name might be was not about to be whisked away from his Sicilian homeland. He began to read but I could see he was losing his concentration; he didn’t appear so cocky. As he looked across he met my eye. We shrugged. Another few minutes and he dived into one of the plastic bags and pulled out a panino. And what a panino! It bristled with nourishment: mozzarella and ham, tomato and olives. He bit hugely and olive oil trickled through his fingers. I could imagine the authority of its preparation. His father might have been dithering about, clapping his son on the shoulder, saying it was good to see him and not to make it so long before he came home again, but it was only thanks to La Mamma the household ran like clockwork. Early-morning calls would be organised, coffee made ready and those plastic bags stacked with food against likely starvation. Men may run Italy but it is the women who run men. When I thought about it, everything made sense. What do Italians call out in times of distress? Mamma Mia!

  The mystery of the becalmed train was now revealed: we had been waiting for somebody. Here she came, a slender young woman in jeans appearing at the end of the platform, a young man behind her, struggling with two large suitcases. The retinue that followed made a great deal of noise and I prayed they wouldn’t choose our carriage but they did, halting outside our window, laughing and talking and giving the girl advice. ‘Be good, phone this evening’, ‘Take care’ and the ubiquitous ‘Ciao!’ Our companion glanced up, gave an audible sigh and went back to his magazine. I was fascinated by this group: there was a strong-featured woman in a two-piece, whose thick legs ended in court shoes, a tall, thin man with wonderful mustachios, and a little man with a weasel face, wearing a trilby. There was also a much younger woman, jiggling a fat baby, and a boy in a T-shirt and shorts, trying to restrain a dog with floppy ears and a long muzzle. The young woman kissed them all on both cheeks but she wouldn’t get away as easily as that.

  And here they came: the supplies against the famine she was about to face when she started travelling North. At last she was seated with her two cases stowed above our heads. She glanced round at us, resembling a pretty pussycat with large brown eyes. Andrew and I glared back: her enormous family had no right to hold up a train. But now, as it drew away, they pressed forward and presented themselves with every accessory and behaviour as though taking part in a sentimental Victorian scene, ‘The Farewell’. They shouted, wept and waved handkerchiefs; the dog just wagged his tail.

  Andrew and I had been treated to another sighting of ‘The Family’ sticking together out of blind instinct, fearful of ever being alone. The Italy of the family is the quintessential Italy. Of course there are feuds; there are even, in Sicily, members of the same family skulking behind prickly pears with rifles, waiting to kill one another. But as a rule the family is the family and it revolves around children – everything is done for the bambini. Their smallest wish must be granted. Italians love children. A crowd will gather round a pretty baby just to admire such a wonderful object.

  I’d had my own experience with the Italian family and its less positive features when I first came to Sicily and fell in love with a Sicilian. Amadeo and I got on swimmingly, laughing, loving, and generally being young and in love. All went well until La Famiglia descended for the obligatory August holiday. They expected I would spend all m
y time with them and could not understand my need for silence and space to read and write. Every single day they shopped at the market and cooked enormous lunches and dinners. Once, when Amadeo’s brother was called away for a day on business, his return was reminiscent of the Prodigal Son, complete with feasting until dawn. Like cuckoos, they finally usurped my nest and thrust me out into the cold.

  On the train, the young woman opened a magazine and settled down. She was going away, but you knew she would return.

  Sicilians travel the world but Circe’s island always calls them back.

  FIVE

  The Secret Lives of Feral Cats

  I kept Lizzie captive for almost three weeks while her leg mended until she was at last ready to be released. Looking back, I marvel how I did it and whether I was completely mad. She was my first experience of feral cats and I had no notion of their lifestyle. As a child, there had always been cats and kittens in our household – my father in particular was a feline fan. Tabitha, Mrs White Puss, Ginger and Biscuit… they were purring, friendly creatures who loved to be stroked and petted. They liked to play and to snuggle up on any available lap.

  Feral cats are as wild as their ancestors and like any other wild creature they have an innate mistrust of human beings. The mother cats take a firm paw with their kittens, training them to be quiet and stay put. A meow might attract predators, as could the movement of kittens running about and playing. Often a feral cat that is taken into a home or shelter will revert to a playful kitten, making up for its childhood. Mothers will also make their kittens wash and wash to remove the scent of food from their fur, which again could attract the enemy. Their games have grim undertones preparing the offspring for the life of a feral. A mother may play very roughly with the dominant male kitten, training him to be an alpha male. She will teach her kittens to go to the food dish, forever watchful and poised to run, should a human appear. It is a game, but one of survival.

  Dogs like wide, open spaces; cats like security. The mothers make their kittens follow them in a row like ducklings, and discipline those who get out of line, another survival instinct. They allow play at dawn and dusk when the night predators are not around but it is light enough for them to see well, but they make their kittens go into a safe place at night.

  Many of them have spent their entire existence living rough near a source of food: a waste heap, dustbin or in the vicinity of a hotel or restaurant. Their lives are based on scrounging for scraps of food, often very scarce, and reproducing. They are likely to be riddled with fleas or ticks and certainly have worms. The tomcat battles for supremacy and can inflict nasty wounds on the female in their savage mating.

  A human cat bond can be forged if the feral kitten is handled early enough in its life. Even so, not all kittens are the same and their degree of friendliness depends on other factors, such as the father’s genes. Also, because the female will have mated with several toms there can be different temperaments within the same litter of kittens as well as different colourings. The older they become, the more difficult it is to alter their wild nature, as I found with Lizzie.

  When we opened that trap in Giulio’s surgery, I had no idea what I was about to take on. Lizzie’s one thought was to escape – throwing herself against the walls, dashing round the room; anything to get away from us. During her time in the apartment she was constantly stressed, wanting to be outdoors leading the life she knew. Anyone who takes it upon herself to tame a feral feline is in for a long haul. Humans have to learn to think like a feral and never to force contact: touching is viewed as a threat and direct eye contact regarded as aggression. If she is frightened she is likely to attack, and feral cat scratches can be very nasty indeed. As time passed and I gained experience in working with feral cats, I came to realise that the best way to help them is to catch them and have them neutered before returning them to their colony. It might seem a brutal existence to us, but it is usually far more unkind to take them away.

  A few days later, I was in the bus park seeing Andrew onto the airport bus, bound for England. I waved him goodbye and shed a few tears. This had been an extraordinary time together. Then I went back to the apartment and Lizzie. Now I was alone and free to enjoy my contemplation of Isola Bella.

  Every time I left the apartment, my little tower, I noticed a group of people standing on the nearby Belvedere gazing down at The View. I photographed it at different times of the day: morning, noon, evening, it was never the same. Fluctuating with the mood of the weather, it seemed to have a persona of its own; I had become enchanted by this constantly changing scene.

  The light changed all the time and the blue through shades of cerulean to turquoise to jade. Sometimes the water resembled ribbed silk as the currents from the Messina straits streamed in. Other times the sun painted it with molten silver so dazzling you needed dark glasses to gaze at it.

  I never grew tired of looking.

  SIX

  The Cats of the Public Gardens

  I was sitting in Taormina’s Public Gardens talking to the cats. The gardens house a colony of feral felines, which grows or diminishes depending on the number of animals abandoned and whether someone throws down poisoned meatballs. A lot of Sicilians look upon ferals as vermin.

  Lily was sitting on my lap, her eyes narrowed to slits as I gently scratched under her chin, a favourite place for cats, though each is different. I thought that she must be over eight years old and, unlike some of her companions who ran away, she had worked out it was politic to allow stroking because then she would get the lion’s share of any titbits.

  The afternoon was so hot it seemed to be holding its breath; time was suspended. I’d chosen to come here and sit in this green shade rather than bake on the beach of Isola Bella, hundreds of metres below the town. I couldn’t face being squashed into a bus packed with people – all that tourist panic of where or where not to get off.

  As I stroked Lily, I gazed at a truly picture postcard view: huge pots overflowing with geraniums, pink and red, standing on a stone parapet, and further beyond grumpy Etna rising against the perfectly blue sky.

  Lily purred. It wouldn’t be hard to nod off myself.

  ‘Sera.’ Rounding a flowerbed, the familiar figure of Maria arrived, out of breath, carrying two large plastic bags.

  ‘Sera, Maria.’

  She and I had met here too often to stand on ceremony. Besides, it was too hot.

  She set the bags down, gathered up the feeding bowls and gave them a rinse in the fountain. Immediately the cats sprang into action. Lily’s eyes widened and she flew from my lap. The air was filled with meows. The cats milled round Maria, pressing themselves against her legs as she emptied out great mounds of pasta cooked with fish. Then there was a lot of grumbling, a lashing out of paws as they fought for their place. They were a pretty sad bunch, but even when they are starving cats retain their table manners – about twenty of them, ginger, black and tortoiseshell; the big grey tom had a weeping raw patch behind his ear, several were thin and mangy and there was a small white cat with one eye. I knew how he lost that: a vicious infection akin to feline chlamydia, which is actually part of a feline upper respiratory disease complex, most often appears in cats as conjunctivitis, which is inflammation of the tissues of the eye, also known as ‘pink eye’.

  Unless it is treated in time with an antibiotic like Pensulvit cream, the animal loses its sight. I carried a tube of this cream in my bag but it really needed two people on the job: one to hold the cat, the other to spread the cream. The two sickly ginger kittens I noticed the other day were absent. Theirs is a grim world.

  Maria plumped herself down on the bench beside me and began to speak in the Sicilian dialect. She did this in the understandable belief that, because we shared a love of cats and the desire to help them, I should be able to understand her. In a way, I suppose I did, at least the gist of what she said. It’s a language packed with guttural sounds and with only a nodding acquaintance with Italian. Pronunciation is easier for a B
rit because the ‘r’ isn’t emphatically rolled. At Maria’s age she was no longer jealous of foreign females, thank goodness! Often I’d been the subject of a penetrating glare when I tried to befriend other Sicilian women.

  She was beautiful, not outwardly, I should add. Elderly, with a strong-featured face and grey hair, she wore the typical matron’s dark frock. Her varicose veins gave her trouble, she’d often told me about them: ‘Mi fanno morire nel caldo’ (they kill me in the hot weather). Without grace, she sat with her legs splayed, showing her knee-highs. But Maria was beautiful within. She had a generous, loving heart, a childlike simplicity. The several badges of animal welfare associations she wore on her collar announced her devotion. She was a widow and had moved from a house into an apartment so she couldn’t keep cats of her own. But every day – whatever the season – she bought fish from the market, cooked it up with pasta and brought it here.

  She related the trouble she was having with her neighbours, who were suspicious of her strange behaviour; this is a society where anything new or unusual is mistrusted and her eccentric feeding of cats was not tolerated. As she described the nasty tricks they played on her, like watering their plants just after she had hung out her washing on the balcony below, I gazed round the gardens.

  Nearby were some gigantic terracotta pots filled with cascading plants covered with tiny scarlet bells; the label said they came from Mexico. The roses were already in bloom and the bougainvilleas as I always remembered them: gaudy and riotous, a clash of magenta and crimson.