It’s
very hot today; airless and windless. In
fact it feels hotter than it’s been all summer.
I don’t want to do too much, so I’m just sitting comfortably channeling
my thoughts to my human carer, so she can write a bit more of my story. I’m actually curled up in a wash basin. Even the floor tiles are hot today and I don’t
want to be out in the sun. We black cats
feel the heat badly. It’s cool here and
a bit moist and I’m off the ground, so I can keep an eye on the other cats and
see what they are up to. I don’t like to
miss anything.
Anyway
– back to my earlier days. I was fortunate
to have been born in the spring. Kittens
born in the autumn have a terrible time.
All the tourists are gone, the tavernas are closed and there simply isn’t
enough food for everyone. To add to our
problems, it’s cold and often wet and it’s very hard to keep warm and keep our
fur dry. Often the good places to keep
warm and dry are already occupied by the older cats – and they don’t want to
share. Even the rubbish bins don't have much inside.
This
spring though, there weren’t many tourists, food was short and I couldn’t get
enough to keep body and soul together. I
was taught good manners from my cat mom and didn’t enjoy joining in the
undignified scrum for a few tourist leftovers.
The
final straw was some late rain. It clouded
over, there was terrible flashing and banging in the sky and I was scared. I had nowhere safe and snug to wait for the
noise to pass and then it began to rain.
Really heavy rain that made rivers out of the roads; my fur got soaked
and I was cold and miserable. The
tourists left the beach, the tavernas closed and there was no possibility of
any food. No chance either of
supplementing my meagre diet by catching a lizard or grasshopper as my cat mom
had taught me. Actually I don’t like to
hunt, I have a live and let live philosophy – not like some of the other cats
who just hunt for fun.
Anyway,
I was wet and soggy, strolling along the beach during a gap in showers, when I
ran into Mitzi. I’d spoken to him
before. Although he has a girl’s name,
he’s actually a boy cat. He used to live
with humans and some of them are very stupid about cat anatomy. He stopped to pass the time of day and I poured
out my woes. I was feeling very down.
Mitzi
told me about the Kini Cat Café, where he went when he was a young cat. Someone had directed him there and he was
very comfortable, with regular food, a place to sleep, medical treatment when
he needed it and lots of other cats. That
was the problem. ‘I stayed a year or so’,
he said, ‘Then it got out of hand. There
were four big fighting cats and they gave me such a hard time, I decided to
leave. I left with my friend Buster, he goes
back sometimes, when he’s hungry – I might go back in the winter, but for the
moment I’m settled here.’
I
was interested – there had to be a better way to make a living. I asked for directions. He looked me up and down. ‘It’s a long way,’ he said, ‘Especially for a
small kitten like you.’ ‘And there’s no
guarantee that they will let you stay when you get there.’
‘How
do I get there?’
‘You
have to walk along the street, up the hill, past the shops until you get to the
second lot of rubbish bins and it’s just opposite. Maybe you can make it, if you take it
slowly. I’d wait for the rain to stop
though – it’s no fun walking a long way when it’s wet. You have to be careful of cars too – they don’t
stop for us, we have to keep out of their way.’
My
tummy was empty. Today all I’d had was a
few cat biscuits made soggy by the rain.
I resolved to try to find somewhere warm and snug for the night, perhaps
a light snack if I was lucky.
Tomorrow
was going to be my big day.
