Spanish views from a small town

One would think that with three cats inside the house, a mouse would not dare to show its whiskers, much less chance living in the kitchen for any length of time. Well, one did have the chutzpah to do just that. And got away with it, too. A couple of weeks ago, two of my cats were in the kitchen one night, and were looking fixedly at a box filled with miscellaneous papers and bags on a shelf under the microwave. I wondered why, turned off the television and stood quietly behind them, observing them. I was the last one up, and the house was extremely quiet. A faint stir came from the area of the box. The cats looked on with even more interest, not moving a whisker. But the stir stopped, and, slowly, the cats lost interest, though they didn't go far. I thought maybe it was a grasshopper, or some other large insect behind there. Maybe even a moth caught in a web.  After that night, the cats would sometimes sit and stare. At other times, they would try to get behind the refrigerator, f...

Our Matrionuxca has gone into the long night. She was a little orange and white cat born in our house fifteen years ago, grandkitten of the first cat we ever had. We found Cleopatra, her grandmother, by the edge of the road coming home from Vilagarcía one night, when we were still engaged. There were cars parked, and people milling around. A car had gone off the road, nobody was hurt. The driver had swerved to avoid hitting a kitten. We found that kitten, who duly bit my husband on the thumb as thanks for the rescue. She came home with us. In her later years, she had Pirracas, who then had Matrionuxca one year. Our daughter gave her the name, which she took from a book she had recently read. From Matrionuxca, (pronounced Matrionushka , with a long u) she got many knicks; Nuxca, Nuxcaya, Catiushka, Nuxkis, Lushca Fushca. From the beginning, she would tell her siblings what to do. Over the years, she took the reins of the cat household. She kept the others in line, particularly Tigre...

I have various cats. Some of those various cats have had medical problems from time to time. I have had to take them to the vet. Some protest little when the time comes to get into the carrier or to take medicine. I have one, that when I bring out the carrier, comes to sniff it, and even steps inside. Curiosity rules. Others, you can't even see their shadow. Survival rules. My oldest, Matrionuxca, had a problem with an abscess and had been seeing the vet regularly for the past couple of weeks. The first time, it was easy to introduce her into the carrier; she hadn't seen it for a while. Last week was the last day she had an appointment. I tiptoed with the carrier into the kitchen, carefully, without making a sound. Even so, she spied me, and when I went to pick her up, she had her suspicions confirmed, and tried to slip away. Putting her in face first was a no-no. She stiffened into a block with strange angles and wouldn't be moved in. I had to turn her around, and, looki...

Cats. Lovely, beautiful, glorious cats. I have been a cat fiend all my life, even when the downstairs neighbor's cat scratched me when I was a little girl. I think what first attracted me to them was their soft fur and their smallness. Their perfectly formed faces with little upside down triangular noses, bright eyes that see right through you, and whiskers that sweep majestically around their perfect little pink mouths with tiny sharp teeth, also ensnared me.  But I never really had cats until we moved here. There were several that visited us in our apartment in Boston, but they weren't ours. They just knew of a house where they could eat for free, and lie on beds all stretched out for their naps, so they came on over. Here, we have had various different cats, most of them descendants of a cat we found one night, when my then boyfriend and I were coming home from a date in Vilagarcía. On the road back, we found the scene of an accident. A car had gone out off the road, but i...

I love cats. I much prefer them to dogs. As a result, I have too many cats. There are three that make their permanent residence inside our house, and nine that live outside in the barn and sleep in the basement.  Most of those were born here, others were brought, like the three original outside cats. Last year we had a plague of mice and rats that preferred our barn to the cold fields and woods. Poison didn't do anything other than feed them, it seemed, and the dog could only bark at them. My husband decided to re-introduce cats to the barn when my mother-in-law's cat had kittens, and brought three of them. This year they multiplied to nine. There isn't a rat nor a mouse to be sniffed out in the barn, the basement, or the field.  Over the years, my daughter has gotten into the habit of bringing home strays. Our indoor Anton was the latest. She had gone to the festival of St. Anthony at a nearby parish in June seven years ago with a friend. While wandering around, my dau...

Do not mention all cats are beautiful to a police officer in Spain. You might get fined up to 600 euros for insulting him. That's what happened to a woman walking home last Sunday in Madrid. It just so happened that she lived near the stadium Vicente Calderón where people were lined up waiting for the doors to open to watch a soccer game. It wasn't just any game, it was the final of the King's Cup between Sevilla and Barcelona with the King in attendance. Police were crawling all over the place and two of them saw a woman walking by with a large bag. On the bag there was a picture of a cat within a circle. Around the circle was written "All Cats Are Beautiful." Above this were the initials "A.C.A.B." That incensed the police officers.  They went running after her, stopped her, and gave her a fine for the initials on the bag. She argued that the initials were spelled out in the circle and meant nothing denigrating. They didn't buy it and fined her...

A call goes out to the national emergency number from Calatayud, in Zaragoza. A man wants help rescuing his two girls from his locked car. Apparently, someone had stuffed toothpicks into the locks and he couldn't open it. He must have one of the last cars without a remote button. And the situation he describes could easily turn dangerous in the warm sun. Firefighters and police quickly arrive at the scene. But there's no car. It seems that it's the apartment lock that has toothpicks stuffed in it and the man is anxious to enter because his daughters are alone. He explains to the increasingly mystified responders that his landlord tries to make life impossible so that he will move out with his daughters. This is not as critical as the previous scenario, but firefighters get into the apartment through a window looking out onto an interior patio and open the apartment. The man is ecstatic when he sees his daughters are well. His "daughters" are two cats. The poli...

Tigresa was anything but a tiger. If a stranger came to the house, she was the first up the stairs and under a bed. The other cats would sometimes fight her and put her in her place. She got that name because ten years ago, when she was a kitten, in her coloring some stripes were visible, so my daughter named her Tigresa.  She considered me her primary friend. She would always come to me to ask for food and cuddles. But she wasn't a lap cat. When I picked her up, she preferred to be held like a baby and for me to squeeze and cuddle her, scratch her under her chin and at her breastbone. And she would purr and stretch and close her paws as if she were kneading. At night her favorite place to sleep until about two years ago was me. I would wake up, feel a weight on my legs, and there she would be, lying in the hollow between my two legs, all stretched out, head on paws, sleeping. And then I wouldn't be able to move most of the night. I was her favorite person; she would tole...

Cats. My favorite animal. I have four, and they each have a different personality and are accordingly, easier or harder to get along with. Or with each other. Alliances are formed, fronts are set, a scapegoat is found, and peace then comes round again.  Tigresa was a misnomer from the beginning. She's more of a paper tiger. She is a very shy cat, greyish with other colors, between tiger and calico, and usually becomes the scapegoat of our little feline world. Though at other times she and the others will make up and they will curl up and sleep together. Any sudden little noise while she's awake and she is suddenly on the lookout, waiting to see if it's fight or flight. While she's asleep, be careful how you awaken her. She may suddenly jump up and skedaddle. I'm the only one she trusts. Even so, if I startle her, she makes sure it's me before she relaxes again. Matrionuxca (or Nuxca, the x pronounced sh) is the boss. She's just a week younger than Tigres...

Some years ago whenever you visited some houses in the surrounding villages, as soon as you walked up to the gate you would be greeted by the intense, deep-toned, frenzied barking of a dog large enough to eat you. Alarmed, you would look around before entering and you would be relieved to see the dog was chained up. Inside the yard, you would see that the dog would be on a long chain, have a couple of old pots nearby with food and water and a place where it could sleep sheltered from the weather. And it would transcend, as the owner talked about what a great watch-dog it was, that the dog lived all its life in that corner of the yard, fed only left-overs or bones. And that was considered normal among villagers that had practicality on their minds. Something similar occurred with cats. They have long been considered working animals and even easier to take care of than dogs. Because cats were free-roaming, living in barns and fields, living off the mice and rats they would hunt. But th...

There is fauna here, though not always visible. There are flies, spiders, mosquitos(!), mice, rats, rabbits, bats, crows, wrens, eagles, falcons, owls, foxes, boars, and the very occasional wolf. It's normal in the house to have the gamut of insects (don't bother with the spray, others will install themselves as soon as it wears off). Also normal are the mice and rats in the barn. The others are strictly outdoor types, and mostly nocturnal, so they tend to be camera shy. So imagine my surprise the other night when, me in the study and my daughter in the kitchen, she asks, "How did the bat get in?"  I go into the kitchen to see a small, black shape quickly flying back and forth the length of the kitchen. I close the door and my daughter opens the window. Two of our cats are in the kitchen, one under the table, not sure what's going on, and the other on the table, full hunter instinct on, trying to swat at the bat. I have visions of hair entanglement and rabies sh...