CATS (A)

Our predecessors in our own house, just down the road from Casa Uno, were thoroughly rational people in all but one respect: her inordinate love of cats. This led her to feed two dozen stray cats every afternoon at from her front door, involving a not inconsiderable outlay of cat-food pellets per day, and creating multiple foraging opportunities later in the night for the rats which naturally roam a farming village. But she was an enchanting person, much respected and indeed much loved in the village, and her little eccentricity where cats were concerned – a deep eccentricity in Spanish eyes for whom cats are only valued as utilities in the keeping down of rodents – was tolerated cheerfully enough. When our predecessors finally left the house to us and returned to England, it was with a parting bequest of 25 Euros and a big bag of cat-pellets, to be handed to a neighbour two houses up the next street, to continue the good work. We in our turn took possession of the house and then returned to England to sort out the furniture to be brought here. When we came back to Las Pinedas a couple of weeks later, a curious absence of cats was detectable. Our immediate neighbour, a French-speaking Algerian and possessor of a shot-gun, shouldered an imaginary gun in explanation. As for the 25 Euros and the big bag of cat-pellets, in this parsimonious society one can be sure they were not wasted.

08/12/2008