Last week I took a photo of a Persian cat sitting on our bird table ..... waiting. But I took the photo through the glass window since I had to be quick, so the photo's not very good. But anyway, I sent it today to the magazine Cat World wondering if they might be able to improve on the picture for use there.
Years ago I wrote an article for Cat World about a group, or maybe gang would be better, of cats that lived under cars on the sea front in Sitges, Spain. In the day they lay around in the shade from the sun's intense rays, occasionally wandering over to cafes nearby hoping to get odd scraps of food from people dining there.
There was one particularly large tomcat who seemed to be the big boss: an enormous head, an intelligent look around the eyes, a "top dog" - or, rather, top cat. We called him John Wayne.
One morning a friend on holiday with me came back from a swim early in the morning to report that he had just seen a rather remarkable sight - a line of cats, one behind the other, a crocodile line of cats if you like, making their way down to the harbour where the fishing boats were coming in. And who was at their head leading the way? None other than John Wayne.
Years passed. Then at a writers' weekend I related this tale of the Sitges cats to the group only to be reliably informed, by a detective novelist no less, that "They're still there".
I wonder if they are there today. And I wonder if that big faced cat, their leader, John Wayne is..... No, can't be alive now surely.
Except in my memory. And maybe in others' too.
2 comments:
The cats of Sitges are most cetainly still there! There's a small colony who live on a breakwater in front of the Calipolis: as you look down the line of rocks, you see little black and white faces bobbing up like meeercats. Then, there are the fat and well fed tribe in the small garden dedicated to Rusinol. And the gang who live on the roof of the PicNic Bar. It's part of Sitges, and we treasure them.
"Anonymous": see my blog on 28th May for a reply.
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