The Great Sicilian Cat Rescue

by Jennifer Pulling

  Over the next few years I often visited Genoveffa. She was always an oasis of kindness and understanding while I struggled to help the cats.

  NINETEEN

  The Tale of Ginger and Lucky Star

  Catsnip was not even a year old but was already establishing a name as a resource for cat welfare. I set up a website and wrote of our first neutering week. There was an unexpected result: I found myself becoming an advice centre. Tourists visiting the island would be concerned about an animal and go online, where it appeared I was almost the only point of contact. I received emails asking how cats would survive in winter when hotels closed, reports of chained dogs spotted in small villages on the side of Mount Etna, looking half-starved and ill. One couple called me, concerned about a small cat they had seen, which they had called Ginger.

  ‘She’s hardly more than a kitten,’ Terry told me. ‘We’ve been going to their colony to feed them every day and we’re worried about her. She seems to have something wrong with her eyes. Is there anything we can do?’

  I knew very well what they were talking about, the problem that shows itself as conjunctivitis but is often linked to upper respiratory infection, common among cats and kittens in Sicily.

  ‘Go to the pharmacist in the Corso,’ I advised, ‘and buy a tube of Pensulvit.’

  ‘The pharmacist?’ Terry sounded surprised.

  ‘Oh yes, they sell products for animals, too.’ I told him. I knew that because I had marvelled myself when I bought my first tube.

  Obviously they took my advice. On my next trip to Taormina I went in search of her, clasping a photograph Terry had sent me. It took me a while to identify her neighbourhood, wandering in the small streets below the Corso. But then a small and seemingly fragile cat came running towards me, unmistakably Ginger!

  I met up with Terry and Natalya when they came to Brighton to show me a sheaf of photographs of their beloved Ginger. She now appeared to be thriving and already they were planning their next visit to see her.

  Over the next two years the continuing story of Ginger unfolded. Terry and Natalya returned several times to Taormina, their principal aim, apart from sunning themselves by the hotel pool and enjoying good food in the evenings, being to check on Ginger. We all agreed that she (ginger cats are usually male, but this Ginger was female) should be neutered.

  The stumbling block was a local gattara who fed her; Marika put her foot down. She was afraid the cat would die under anaesthetic.

  ‘You’ll have to get her on your side,’ I advised them. ‘You can’t just ride roughshod over her wishes. After all, she feeds Ginger all year round, while you are only there for a week or so.’

  So the neutering of Ginger was delayed and another year passed. One morning, I checked on my emails and saw that Terry and Natalya were back in Taormina once again. I expected to have a good progress report but Terry sounded concerned: Ginger was very poorly and her body was covered in what looked like scabs, which she was continually scratching. I suggested they contact Oscar La Manna, my wonderful local vet, who concerns himself with the plight of feral animals, and ask him to come and take a look at her.

  ‘He says it’s mushrooms,’ they wrote later.

  Mushrooms! I puzzled over this for a while and then remembered the raised rings on my sister’s skin and mine when we were children, infected by various family cats. It was ringworm, of course, caused by a fungus that grows on the skin like a mushroom on the bark of a tree. I had to laugh.

  ‘She is being treated but he also wants to neuter her. Apparently, she’s had several litters of kittens that have all died and he thinks it for the best.’

  It was arranged that Oscar La Manna would return the following morning, but when Terry and Natalya arrived they found that Ginger had beaten everyone to it. Overnight she had given birth to kittens and tucked them all away in an inaccessible place.

  As Oscar said: ‘I can’t treat her while she is feeding the kittens and she will have to stay where she is.’

  Sadly, Ginger’s kittens died but it meant the treatment could be started.

  Marika agreed to talk to the couple when they explained, ‘We don’t want Ginger to go through this experience again. It’s kinder to have her neutered.’

  This time, the gattara agreed.

  Another case of ‘touristitis’, as my friend Kathy described it. She lives in the north of Italy, Trieste, where sentiments towards animals are very different. Terry and Natalya were typical of so many British and Northern European visitors who find it difficult to understand the locals’ attitude towards animals.

  Lucky Star was indeed the most fortunate of kittens. Local people in Taormina wonder at Laura, the young woman who never takes a holiday but chooses to spend her time and money caring for cats. Even her doting father feels that her attitude might be a bit exaggerated.

  ‘It’s fine to love cats,’ he says. ‘But I’m concerned by how much stress it gives her.’

  Nevertheless, every ten days or so, the two of them drove to an out-of-town supermarket, where Laura stocked up on cut-price tins and packets of cat food. Taormina, as I’ve said before, is beautiful – indeed, the guidebooks class it as one of the loveliest places in the world. The Public Gardens are an oasis of calm, where the tourist can stroll among palm trees along shady paths, dreaming green thoughts. Laura knows differently, though: she has glimpsed the dark side of this perfect little town. She understands only too well the violence, the indifference of its inhabitants, and the reality of this so-called corner of Paradise.

  ‘Come and see my cats,’ she invited.

  I followed her down uneven stone steps away from the main street with its boutique shops and pavement cafes – the throng of visitors taking a walk after the heat of the day had cooled. We walked along a narrow street where several motorbikes were parked against a row of garages. And there they were: her cats, the colony she fed and cared for… ginger, black, white, black and white and tabby, all meowing and pressing their bodies against Laura’s legs. Each of them had a name.

  ‘That’s Marchetto, here is Bianca and this is Nino,’ she told me.

  The black cat had a healing wound across the top of his head. He was wary of me and wouldn’t come near.

  ‘Someone hit him,’ Laura explained, ‘some imbecile. Nino disappeared for several days and came back with this awful cut across his head. I rushed him to the vet and, thank God, he is recovering.’

  Just as she was filling plastic bowls with cat food, a door shot open and a woman came towards us. She was furious.

  ‘Stop that! Just stop that! If you want to feed these miserable creatures take them to your house and do it there.’

  She aimed a kick at one of the bowls, but Laura stepped in her way.

  ‘If you continue doing this,’ the woman hissed, ‘I shall report you to the police.’

  Laura did not reply and, after a while, the woman retreated to her house.

  ‘She can’t touch me,’ said Laura. ‘People are always threatening me but there is no law that forbids feeding these cats.

  ‘It is the hatred of these people towards animals that upsets me,’ she continued, as we climbed the steps again and joined the crowds in the main street. ‘They treat them like vermin. There’s been a spate of poisoning, but of course we never know who has done it and so we can’t report them.’

  The light was fading. Tourists gathered in Piazza IX Aprile, the huge main square, to lean on the railings and gaze towards the twinkling lights along the coast, the illuminated Greek Theatre. The scent of jasmine intensified. Children chased each other or crowded round the ice-cream cart. It was a scene of such tranquillity; incongruous with the landscape Laura was painting. This place began to seem like a theatrical illusion of light, colour and laughter concealing a sordid truth. Now that I understood Laura’s ‘reality’, it all seemed flimsy and somewhat corrupt.

  ‘There used to be so many cats here,’ Laura said, as we strolled among the roses and lilies of the Public Gardens. ‘Now
there are very few; it’s certain someone is poisoning them.’

  We came across one of the gardeners humming under his breath as he watered a yellow hibiscus. The sun shone through the stream of water creating a miniature rainbow – he seemed happy to be caring for this garden.

  ‘Where are the ginger kittens?’ Laura called out ‘I can’t see them anywhere.’

  As he glanced up, we could see his mood change. He shrugged and then went back to his work.

  ‘You see, they really don’t care,’ said Laura.

  A few days later I went in search of Laura and found she was very upset. Someone had put four kittens into a bag and literally thrown them away in a rubbish bin. Animal-loving friends of Laura noticed a faint meowing and rescued them. They were tiny; probably born only a couple of days ago. Two were dead but the others were blindly searching for food. Their crying was breaking Laura’s heart.

  Together we went to the pharmacist to buy the special milk for kittens and a small pipette. It is an onerous task rearing newborn felines – they need to be fed every two or three hours.

  ‘I don’t know how we’ll manage,’ Laura confessed. ‘I’m working all day and my father certainly wouldn’t allow me to nurse kittens in his shop.’

  Fortunately her friends, the couple who had found the kittens, said they would take responsibility.

  Once again I was struck by the juxtaposition of peace and violence in this place. Here was a cafe where people laughed and were tipsy on sun and wine, without a care in the world. I wanted to tell them that a few yards away from this jolly scene there was a pile of rubbish where some cruel individual, having snatched those mites from their mother, had dumped them here.

  I was reminded of W.H. Auden’s poem ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’ and of how suffering takes place in the midst of ordinary, careless life.

  Auden visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels in 1938 and viewed Icarus Falling by Bruegel. The theme of his poem is the apathy with which humans view individual suffering. You might say Breugel’s painting doesn’t take it that seriously – if you look closer at the untroubled ship sailing by, you can see the foolish and drowning son of Dedalus, legs akimbo, sticking out of the water. Is the artist trying to say that life is absurd, suffering insignificant? Or was it meant to portray the Icarus event as being of no consequence in order to strengthen the point of the painting?

  Would these happy travellers be shocked by what I told them, or would they resent that I had disturbed the calm surface of their stay? I wondered.

  Laura told me that one of the kittens had died but the other one was fighting on; however, there was a new problem. Her friends were going on holiday, one that was booked months ago. What was to happen to the kitten? Would violence win after all?

  She got out her contact book and we phoned around. A cat lover in a neighbouring village apologised profusely; she had to take her ailing husband to hospital. We sent emails to others but no one bothered to reply.

  The best way forward was to pay a vet but the first, a truly caring man, was up to his eyeballs in work and could not take anything more on, he told us.

  Meanwhile, the day was fast approaching when Laura’s friends would depart. I was also on the verge of leaving for England. Laura was becoming desperate: if this tiny scrap of life wasn’t fed, she would die. Laura was in tears.

  And then the small miracle occurred: another vet didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes, I will take the kitten. There is a young and newly qualified vet in the surgery. She is willing to help and I will be in attendance to keep my eye on things.’

  Time passed and the tiny feline thrived. She eats like ‘a little pig’, Laura told me, ‘she purrs, she plays – there are some people in this apathetic world who aren’t indifferent to animal suffering.’

  Laura drove to the surgery to see her. She was now a ball of white, with smudges of grey fluff. It was clear the young woman vet had fallen in love with her. The kitten’s miserable past was forgotten and there was no self-pity.

  As another poet, D.H. Lawrence, observed, he ‘never saw a wild thing sorry for itself’. Lawrence lived for nearly three years in this place, a tortured soul forever wandering, but who found a degree of harmony here.

  On my return, Laura took me to see the kitten. Back with the animal-loving friends, she would soon be adopted into a loving home. Scuttling about our feet, she played with my shoelace and then, like all young things, she suddenly tired. She curled into a ball and went to sleep… and slept with such tranquillity. All was well.

  ‘What will you call her?’ I asked.

  While Laura considered, I looked back over these days and the undertones of cruelty and violence I had witnessed. Certainly there was sunshine here but also a world of shadows.

  Laura had been watching as the kitten woke, yawned and immediately settled off to sleep again.

  ‘Stella Fortunata,’ she said at last.

  I translated the words to English: ‘Lucky Star’.

  Oblivious, the kitten slept on. Suddenly, all the questions and imponderables faded and I felt myself in the moment, rejoicing that one small being had been saved. I am not religious in the accepted sense, although I have my own beliefs, but now the words of the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ brought tears to my eyes: ‘I once was lost and now am found…’

  I smiled at Laura.

  ‘Oh yes, let’s call her Lucky Star!’

  TWENTY

  A Crash Course in the Sicilian Psyche

  For the attention of the Mayor: Dear Sir, following our visit to the town hall in June of this year when you agreed to provide a room for the neutering and treatment of feral cats can you confirm that this will be made available?

  Sir, please can you reply to my email of October?

  I am presently planning my next visit to Taormina to carry out more work with the feral cats. Can you please let me know how arrangements have proceeded for the provision of facilities?

  Silence. I did not hear another word.

  ‘Words are easy,’ Dorothea Fritz had said. ‘It’s whether they actually do something about it.’

  How right she had been. As so often, I turned back to The Leopard: ‘It doesn’t matter about doing things well or badly; the sin which we Sicilians never forgive is simply that of “doing” at all. It’s not a case of universal apathy: the people who try to do things are invariably checked by those who don’t’.

  But I was not prepared to give up. Throughout the winter of 2003 I continued to raise funds and to campaign for the free movement of foreign vets within EEC countries. I even lobbied then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi!

  Susan Dale from the Anglo-Italian Society for the Protection of Animals listened to my woes with a sympathetic ear.

  ‘I wondered if it would be possible for Dorothea Fritz to bring her mobile ambulance from Naples,’ I ventured. ‘I could pay expenses.’

  ‘That would be a way forward. I’ll talk to Dorothea and see how she is fixed.’

  So I called Elke.

  ‘That’s wonderful news but where are we to operate?’

  We had decided it was too risky to use the summerhouse again. Nino’s panic over his wife’s cat, the way word had spread round Taormina in spite of our attempts at secrecy, had more or less put paid to that.

  ‘Well, if Taormina isn’t interested,’ she said, ‘I’ll talk to the Mayor of Letojanni. I’m on good terms with him.’

  She was true to her word and a week later called me to say he had agreed to allow Dorothea’s spaymobile to be parked in a large garage in the little town. Not only that, he offered Dorothea and her two colleagues free board in an apartment and meals in local restaurants. Catsnip could spring into action again!

  I left England on 4 May 2004. My plan was to spend the two weeks prior to Dorothea’s arrival spreading the news of our programme among the local people and locating colonies of cats.

  Letojanni is only a short bus ride away but a very different tourist venue from Taormina. Situated on the coast, it has wide
shingle beaches, unlike the bay of Isola Bella. It has, in my view, the normal atmosphere of a community going about its business, although tourism is steadily on the increase. At one time it was just a small fishing village. When the railway line and the main road were established in 1866, Letojanni became increasingly important and many influential families moved down from the mountains of Gallodoro to take up residence there. One of these was the Durante family and Francesco Durante was to become a famous ‘son’. His father wanted him to study engineering but Fate took a hand the day he visited the Messina University of Medicine with a friend who was studying there. Amazed at Durante’s comments and obvious scientific bent, a professor urged him to study medicine and he became an outstanding student. Later, the young Durante moved to Rome where, in 1872, he conceived and founded a general hospital. When Messina was devastated by the terrible earthquake of 1908, Durante was there with medical supplies, working with a group of volunteers to create field hospitals. Sicily had called him back as it does so many of its countrymen. His accomplishments were honoured in 1923 when the ‘poor’ of Letojanni erected a monument, a bronze bust by Ettore Ximenes, celebrated Palermitan sculptor, in what is now called Piazza Durante.

  Whenever I stroll in this square I am startled by its grandeur: wide, light and airy and fringed by tall palm trees, it seems as if a giant hand has plucked it from a far larger city and dropped it down here. Bars and cafes surround it, including the Niny bar, famed for its granita and delicious ice cream. When it became too hot to continue my ramblings round the village, I’d sit at one of the outside tables under a huge white umbrella and spoon up the coffee ice crystals topped with whipped cream; served with a brioche it is a favourite summer breakfast among Sicilians. I’d watch the to-ing and fro-ing across this beautiful piazza. On one of these occasions I was intrigued by a tall, dark-haired figure clasping a black document folder, who strode with such presence I was sure he must be a person of some importance, an actor perhaps. Later, I was to discover my guess had not been far from the truth.