The Great Sicilian Cat Rescue (6 page)

A
few months later I was back in Taormina. During the summer, I had sent several postcards to Antonella asking after Lizzie but had received no reply. I took it to mean that there was nothing to report. My little cat had resumed her feral existence.

Sicily had got into my blood again and, though I had a series of commissioned articles to work on throughout those months of 2002, I was restless. It was a fair English summer but I longed for the intensity of that Sicilian sun, the vivid blue sky. I contacted my landlady, Elke, and towards the end of September 2002, I returned to her apartment. It was as welcoming as ever, but as I walked up the slope towards Taormina centre, I began to wonder if it was a mistake to have come back so soon.

The sky was overcast, the atmosphere oppressive; not a leaf
stirred: Sirocco, the bane of Sicily’s climate; that dry dust-laden wind, which blows from the Sahara. Although this was a dull day of cloud and mist, Sirocco can arise out of a clear sky and at any time of the year. It brings excessive humidity and an intolerable pressure of air that frays the nerves, sharpens the temper and, as many people claim, it affects their health. For some, and I am among them, it brings on a crushing sense of depression, making life seem hopeless, work meaningless, past and present a hideous mistake and the future ridiculous.

‘There is no need to call a friend to make an appointment,’ the Taorminese say, ‘you just have to take a stroll along Corso Umberto and, at some point or other, you are bound to bump into them.’

Today that was precisely what I didn’t want to do – I needed a little time alone to ease myself back into the exuberant Sicilian life. So I turned away and took the downward winding road that led to the Public Gardens. I wandered along the paths, identifying some of the flowers: there were French marigolds, amaryllis, those fountains of little red bellflowers that must have continued throughout the summer. There were still some roses and also Michaelmas daisies, a glorious cluster of them. Huge banana plants reared against the clear sky of a still-baking hot summer. They reminded me that this is a semi-tropical climate.

As I reached the end of the gardens I came across something I hadn’t noticed before: it was Florence Trevelyan’s dog cemetery. Two poignant inscriptions summed up the often incomprehensible, for Sicilians, British love of dogs.

Dear Fanny. Faithful Friend and Companion. Poisoned June 27 1899 aged 15 years.

I turned back towards the entrance and saw an amazing sight: a cat had jumped up into the fountain and was sitting there, her tiny mouth wide open, catching the falling water. Tourists were gathered round and some took photographs. She continued drinking and drinking but when she had finished I think she felt a bit odd – perhaps she had taken in too much air.

‘
Sera
,’ a voice called and I turned to see that Maria had arrived.

She was weighed down with laden bags and I could see her legs were still troubling her. The cats had been waiting for her and milled around, their tails held upright, the ends slightly curved over. It is a signal of friendliness, I’ve learned. Kittens use this to greet their mother and adult cats continue to treat their favourite humans like a trustworthy mum, their tails held high. Cats who sense no hostility will greet each other with upright tails. A relaxed cat’s tail curves down and back up in a gentle ‘U’. The more interest she feels, the higher the tail. No doubt the interest here was Maria’s supply of food.

It was clear that she loved cats in the way one loves little children.

‘
Micio, micio
,’ she murmured, as she filled their bowls.

But do cats love us? Or is this kind of show of affection cupboard love? True, they don’t respond with the tail-thumping greeting of a dog when his owner returns. Research has shown canines experience positive emotions, like love and attachment, meaning that dogs have a level of sentience comparable to that of a human child. Cats are less demonstrative and some people dub them aloof. But surely it follows that, if a cat behaves in the same way towards certain human beings as she does towards other cats, then undoubtedly she is showing she is fond of her owner. Domesticated cats take this much further; they use kneading behaviour, the front paws treading on soft surfaces, a hark back to kittenhood. Kitten paws knead against the mother cat’s breasts to induce milk to be released. Adult cats continue this behaviour when they’re feeling most relaxed and content.

My cat, Sheba, has a habit of arriving on my pillow and kneading into my bare shoulder, purring loudly in my ear. When a cat throws herself on the ground at your feet and rolls around, she is asking for attention. Presenting her stomach in this way puts a cat in a vulnerable position so cats generally reserve the rolling around for people they trust and maybe love. The thing I love best about Sheba is her sometimes slow ‘eye blink’ from across the room; I have been honoured with a cat kiss.

The feral cats surrounding Maria while I mused on this were simply intent on having as much as they could of the pasta and fish mixture she was dispensing. They were silent. In contrast, domestic cats can be very talkative. Over time, Sheba has developed a number of meows to suit different
occasions. They range from the little chirrup that greets me if I wake her when coming into a room to a plaintive high-pitched meow on her arrival in the house and not seeing anyone about. Then there is the quite desperate meow when she sees a packet of her food being opened. And of course there are the purrs. While these are sometimes a signal of comfort and contentment, research has shown that purring is an attempt to get something done. I remember my other cat Fluffy’s loud and disconcerting purr, which I initially failed to recognise as a cry for help. New to the world of felines, I was unaware that they will purr when stressed or in distress or pain and are simply trying to attract attention.

The cats that Maria fed had no need of these niceties except perhaps for Lily, who had now settled herself on the elderly woman’s lap while the others, having washed themselves, disappeared back into the garden.

I went to sit by her.

‘How are things?’ I asked.

She made the ‘
muh
!’ shrug. ‘Always the same, my neighbours are up to their usual tricks. As for these cats, they have done well enough during the summer. So many tourists feed them, but winter is coming. There will be rain and maybe those little ones won’t survive.’

As I gazed at her large, work-worn hands passing over Lily’s fur I sensed again the essential goodness in Maria and her love of these
trovatelle
, abandoned creatures; a devotion that marginalised her from the society she lived in.

‘I am so sorry,’ I said.

She gave me her lovely smile. ‘
Pazienza
.’

T
hose small things restored me and I felt ready to face Taormina. In the evening I went in search of some Sicilian music, climbing the steps off the Corso that led to the Grotta di Ulisse. Someone grabbed my hand and I was whizzed right across the restaurant and unceremoniously plonked down at the table of an American couple who didn’t seem to mind this intruder at all.

So we relaxed and talked. And my companions of this evening told me they had been all over Sicily to visit once again the Greek temples at Agrigento, the mosaics at Piazza Armerina. They had been to the island’s ‘navel’ Enna, marvelling they had forgotten how splendid are those billowing hills of golden durum wheat, spent a day on the beach at Acireale, gazing at the rock, which in Greek mythology was hurled by the one-eyed giant into the sea.

‘But the very best day,’ commented Anna-Maria, ‘was when we went back to “our” village. We drove into the country and watched my uncle’s shepherd make the ricotta cheese and drank wine from his vineyard. For me, that is the real Sicily.’

‘Does it make you want to come back here?’ I asked.

‘Maybe, one day, when we are old.’

In the meantime, there was America the wonderful, the bounteous to seduce them. They owned a hardware store, they told me, had loads of friends. The problem with coming back to Sicily, they added, was an ongoing family squabble over a piece of land.

‘We need our space.’

Gaetano reached for his wallet and handed me his card. ‘If ever you find yourself in Brooklyn, look us up.’

We joined in the general clapping to the music and I felt a wave of joy on hearing it again. The musicians might be playing for the tourists. They might, as one of the group told me, travel into Taormina from the surrounding villages because they needed to earn money to feed their families. One of them butted in to add that he had five children, think of how many mouths to feed. But there is something about the Sicilian when he plays and sings that is true to his nature. Reaping the corn, fishing by the light of sun or moon, riding a mule along the mountain path, his songs express emotions tinged with nostalgia and history. They come from the soul. There is ‘
La Terra Amara
’ (The Bitter Earth), the earth that has sent him all over the world to escape the tyranny of earning his crust in agriculture; the resentful earth of Sicily demanding back-breaking work
under a scorching sun, unyielding of water as a revenge for its deforestation. It is hard to believe that the rivers, especially the Simeto, Salso and Belice, were once navigable. Now they are silted up, or dry riverbeds, which are often used as rubbish dumps.

There came the mournful tremble of the mandolin, but not all these songs are melancholic. One of the best loved has the singer imitating the braying of a donkey. It might be corny, it might be calculated, but I’m an easy target. ‘
La Terra Amara
’, which nevertheless draws back so many Sicilians to their land, to this bitter earth.

The boom of the terracotta jar, the
quartara
, as the player twirled it in his hands and blew into it and the
fischietto
, a simple, three-stopped cane pipe, which in the right hands can produce a virtuoso of sound.

When I first heard this music, years ago, I found it all ‘so romantic’. There were candles on the tables and painted jugs full of scarlet wine. Romantic! I could imagine that couple at the opposite table saying it in German, Dutch, Swedish: ‘So romantic’. And that is what my wise Sicilian friends trade on. They have a commodity:
La Sicilia
! Blue seas and skies, wine and an excellent cuisine, why not sell it for the best price you can get?

Tonight it amused me to watch the German tourists pay an inflated price for local wine, clapping their hands and shouting ‘Wunderbar!’

‘Jenny?’

I glanced up and saw the owner, Filippo, had come to our table.

‘There is something I have to tell you…’

His expression was grave. ‘The cat, the one in Castelmola you took to the vet…’

His voice was almost drowned out by a loud burst of applause and I tried to concentrate.

‘What is it?’

‘She and many others were poisoned.’

I had a vision of the last time I had seen Lizzie, lying so contently, blinking in the sunlight. I brought my hands to my face. ‘
No
!’

‘I’m sorry.’

Stricken, I was gazing at Filippo, trying to take in his words.

‘Don’t be sad,’ he told me.

Don’t be sad! When I felt the earth had shifted beneath me and I was falling into a black hole.

The music continued, people shouted and sang; they clapped their hands to its rhythms. I stayed on, there was nowhere else to go and I didn’t want to be alone in the apartment. Then I remembered what Antonella had told me about the people in Castelmola who disliked cats. It must have been one of those who rolled poison into balls of meat and threw them down for the unsuspecting creatures to eat. I felt such a rage against them and the terrible act they had committed. Anger like this is fertile ground for notions of revenge but, as the night wore on and my fury turned to grief, I made up my mind I wouldn’t leave it there. Somehow I would help these cats.

I
had never realised that my landlady Elke was a
gattara
supreme until the day she invited me to visit her house. It was a few days after I'd received the devastating news of Lizzie, and I welcomed this diversion from my thoughts. She called me when, as usual, I was sitting with my coffee at the picture window.

‘Come up and see my home.'

I knew that the property gazed out over the Ionian Sea, perched on the top of Capo Sant'Andrea, but I had never been able to discern exactly where or how you reached it.

‘There's a little road that leads up on the left side of Isola Bella beach,' she told me. ‘If you wait there, I'll come and fetch you.'

The tall gate swung open as if onto a magical domain where few people were admitted. Then came the slow drive
along a rough road winding upward and flanked by rocky outcrops and the towering prickly pear. As we turned into the final stretch, Elke slowed the car to a crawl and I saw the reason why: several cats, which had been sunning themselves, scurried away. She led the way up a leafy-lined path into the garden: the lush beauty of a Mediterranean garden where pots spilled brilliant flowers and there was a straggle of ferns, roses, bougainvillea and that strange bird-like plant, the strelitzia. But most beautiful of all were the cats, so many of them: lurking in the shadows, skulking among plants, having a playful fight in a pool of sunlight. The garden was a cats' paradise. Tiny kittens regarded me with huge eyes, other cats pressed themselves against Elke's legs and she bent to talk to them, calling each by name. Found, saved or abandoned by uncaring people, these were the lucky cats who had found Elke. They had their own little shelters set among the plants and she fed them twice daily from her huge store of food kept in an old abandoned church in the grounds.

We moved into the house, awash with light as if it were an extension of Isola Bella, its terraces seeming to hang over the sea. Then I noticed all the same lovely touches that made my apartment so homely: the pretty cushions and throws over the rattan chairs, a fat tassel hanging from a basket. There were more cats, too: Freddi, fluffy pale-grey Nuovola and a huge ginger tom. They did not mix with the outdoor cats but carried on a luxurious existence in this cool interior.

This was a revelation for me. While I had been secretly caring for Lizzie, I had had no idea that Elke continually rescued all these felines.

Idyllic as this setting appeared, it was also one of violence
and death. As we sat outside with a cold drink, Elke told me about the tomcats that grab hold of the females and bite holes in their necks to keep them still while they mate.

‘So many of the kittens die. There are some nasty viruses in Sicily and their immune system isn't very strong. It's heartbreaking. You have to be strong if you do this kind of work.'

Later on I was to remember those words when I too encountered cruelty and fought death. And so I related a part of the story of Lizzie and how upset I was over the poisoning. I made no mention of the fact I had nursed her in the apartment.

Elke nodded. ‘A lot of people here hate cats; they bring their children up to view them as a health risk. You should have brought her here.'

I felt terrible, guilty and terrible, but then how was I to know that Elke was also a
gattara
?