The Great Sicilian Cat Rescue

by Jennifer Pulling

  ‘People would come, calling out his name,’ recalled Deborah, ‘with gifts of gourmet cat foods.’

  After a year or two he was the undisputed King Cat of the colony, often sitting at the first step of the stairs leading down, so the passing tourist could marvel and maybe even walk down to contribute to his and his fellow cats’ welfare.

  His fame grew. Meanwhile, Deborah’s book, Nelson il Re Senza un Occhio, won a literary award in Italy and was translated into English.

  Alas, Nelson is no more: his health suffered as a result of the damp conditions in the sanctuary but he is a legend and a symbol of the wonderful work at Torre Argentina.

  It was time to visit the sanctuary once more, climbing down those metal stairs. What a difference from the last time I was here! The place was buzzing with activity. There was a well-lit central area, which housed the office and reception area for visitors. Someone was sitting at the computer, answering the emails that flood in every day.

  ‘It’s here we plan neutering campaigns while other volunteers talk to visitors,’ Deborah told me.

  A Dutch couple were asking how they could adopt a cat and other tourists were shopping for cat tea towels, cat calendars and, of course, Deborah’s book.

  To the left was a large, light enclosure, where cats roamed. Deborah introduced me to Tatiana, twice-injured before she found a safe haven there. Then there were cats who had lost their legs like the beautiful ginger tom who was nevertheless getting about quite well, as was the three-legged Don Camillo. The walls were lined with cages where other cats that were being nursed or had recently been neutered were housed. Deborah greeted one volunteer from Australia, another from the USA.

  ‘It’s a kind of United Nations here!’ she laughed, adding: ‘Our workdays begin at 8am with cleaning and disinfecting cages. Due to our confined quarters and the ease with which diseases spread, this job is one of the most important for our volunteers. Next, food is distributed to the cats in the underground shelter along with those that live permanently outdoors among the ruins. While feeding the outdoor cats, the volunteers must keep a vigilant eye out for sick or newly abandoned ones, who must be caught, treated, vaccinated, spayed and neutered.

  ‘Some of the volunteers don’t think they have the confidence to do this work so I do a convincing job and they soon get the hang of it.

  ‘One woman visited with her husband and said she would be back to volunteer the following year, without him. We are also supporting 40 other colonies, which have a minimum of 20 cats and a maximum of 120. We liaise with the gattare and give them supplies of food, help them with medical treatment; in this way we are supporting 1,500 cats. We have certainly made a difference. At times when it seems impossible to go on, something happens that raises hope and encouragement. Perhaps one of our most handicapped cats is adopted or a generous donation helps pay another bill. In the end the hundreds of abandoned cats and kittens that have been placed in loving families and the thousands we manage to have sterilised every year make it all worthwhile.’

  A day or two later we were all dressed up and making our way to the grand Piazza Venezia, where Italian fascist leader Mussolini once harangued the crowd from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia. We climbed to the top of a bank building to the wide roof terrace where the Gala evening was being held. After accepting a glass of wine, we gazed around. What an elegant Roman crowd! The men wore dark, beautifully cut suits; the women had not a hair out of place. But how that elegance swiftly vanished when the food was served. They fell on it as if they hadn’t eaten for a week, pushing their way in to empty plate after plate. Talk about a rugby scrum! But British habits die hard: we held back politely with the result that we scarcely got a sandwich. Then came the raffle and here I caught sight of Dorothea drawing the tickets from a box. In contrast to many of the women, she was simply dressed but her smile outshone them all. There was time for a quick word before she was whisked away for photographs.

  ‘Would you come back to Letojanni?’ I asked her. ‘I think Elke can get the permesso again.’

  ‘Certainly I’d come, but not in summer again. It was far too hot.’

  ‘I was planning on the autumn,’ I said rashly, thinking, if she says ‘yes’ I shall have to get busy and raise some more funds.

  ‘Glutton for punishment,’ Andrew murmured, as we came out into the piazza again.

  ‘Maybe, and I could do with some food right now!’ I laughed.

  We turned left past the illuminated Forum, which was swarming with tourists. It struck me that Rome is a place almost worn out by being looked at. People were everywhere; it was as if everyone was on holiday.

  As we walked through this balmy night, I felt a surge of joy at just being alive and in Rome. I love this city and I always visit with a sense of coming home. We made our way in the direction of the Colosseum. Without saying a word we knew where we were heading: Luzzi.

  With its long tables set out on the street covered with check cloths, it’s not a place to go for a cosy tête-à-tête. Conversation competes with all those who surround you. But we love it! Love the crazy waiters and the cheap and tasty menu. Luzzi doesn’t serve some of the best food in Rome but it is fun, cheap and some of its dishes are pretty good, including the Amatriciana, or the antipasto that you serve yourself from the array of veggies and other goodies in the back, and you’ll be charged depending on the size of your plate.

  In the evening, though, your best bet at Luzzi is the pizza with a proper thin Roman crust and fresh ingredients.

  As we ate, I thought of the saying ‘Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die’, attributed to the Neapolitans, living in the shadow of Vesuvius. Carpe Diem, seize the day: this one had offered me such encouragement and the will to continue with Catsnip; it had been a particularly significant day.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I Have My Doubts

  The scene is surreal. I’m standing in the classroom of a Sicilian school talking to the children about cats. I can hardly hear myself speak. Under the beady eye of their teachers, they may be well behaved but my appearance is treated like something of an entertainment. Hands flutter, they all want to speak at once.

  ‘Signora, I have two kittens I found in the street. One of them has something wrong with his eye. What should I do?’

  ‘I love my dog, Signora, but my parents don’t want him in the house.’

  ‘Signora! Signora! Listen, I want to be a vet when I grow up. I want to help all the animals. What must I do?’

  Lovely, innocent children who have yet to come under their parents’ mistrust of animals, the general ignorance of these creatures as sentient beings. Over the course of that week I visited five schools. At one, where I had distributed fifty of my booklets on animal welfare, the children crowded round me.

  ‘Signora, please will you sign it?’

  ‘And mine, and mine!’

  Talk about being a celebrity for five minutes.

  These school visits were a welcome break from my second catch/neuter/return week in Letojanni, which I had found upsetting and difficult.

  After my return from Rome to England, the summer of 2005 had been a busy one. Catsnip had taken over my life but it was time to concentrate on work. My play, End of Story, had been chosen as one of six to form a theatre trail during the Arundel Festival; now we went into rehearsal. The play dealt with the relationship between Harold Shipman and his wife, Primrose. I’d always been fascinated by the evil doctor and his apparent ease in murdering so many of his patients before he was found out. What intrigued me even more was the way Primrose supported him without question. What kind of woman can sit in court and suck sweets while her husband is on trial for mass murder? I had not only written the play but also cast myself in the part of Primrose and spent hours in charity shops, looking for suitable clothes. Primrose was not known for her sartorial elegance. As I am quite slim, I had to pad myself out to achieve her size. The play ends with news of Shipman’s suicide and my unearthly shriek of horror echoed round t
he disused prison cells, where we were performing.

  While all this was going on, I had to juggle fundraising and planning Catsnip’s next trip.

  ‘Education is an important part of this work,’ Suzy Gale, my friend and cat lady, had told me. ‘Unless the local people understand the rationale for what we’re doing and respect animals, it’s a never-ending task.’

  She was right and what better place to start than with young people?

  ‘Dogs Trust do a lot of educational material,’ Suzy added. ‘I’ll put you in touch with Clarissa Baldwin.’

  Clarissa proved to be very helpful, sending me proofs of the publication the Trust was preparing for Romania. I planned a simple illustrated booklet and, having written it in English, persuaded an Italian friend to do the translation.

  ‘I think it’s a great idea,’ Jayne at Animals’ Voice enthused. ‘We take wildlife into schools and talk to the children about their welfare. I’ll pass it on to the others.’

  A few days later she called and said the magazine would sponsor my booklet, so off I went to the printers.

  Then Elke called me from Italy: ‘There’s another problem. I’ve been trying to get the permesso for Letojanni but there’s a lot of talk about mobile surgeries like Dorothea’s being illegal. Yes, I know they allowed it last year but…’

  The capricious nature of ‘Those in Charge’ was getting to me. ‘Even though the local state-paid vets don’t carry out work they are supposed to do and get paid for?’ I retorted.

  Elke sighed. ‘That’s typical Sicily. But don’t despair, I’ll go on trying.’

  I’d been to the printers to collect my bundles of booklets and was almost on the point of packing my case when at last Elke called.

  ‘I’ve got it! I went to the town hall this morning and they gave it to me.’

  I flew back to Sicily on 26 October. This gave Elke and me a few days before Dorothea arrived with her spaymobile. Time to contact the gattare and check on the local colonies of cats.

  My arrival coincided with two important religious festivals: All Saints Day and All Souls Day, 1 and 2 November. These days are very significant for Catholic tradition but their roots can be found deep in a pagan past. The Romans dined by their ancestors’ graves.

  The invisible world of the departed souls is ever present in the Sicilian psyche. When I lived with the Galeano family, I would often encounter the little Signora carrying a bunch of flowers and hurrying towards the cemetery to visit her husband’s grave.

  During All Saints Day, the whole family will spend time in the cemeteries with their dead. Lamps glow among the graves; there are flowers, and families picnicking. Often the gravestones are elaborate and display photographs of the departed. Far from being a day of sadness, it is one of celebration and love.

  And what better way to celebrate than with sweets? At one time the Day of the Dead rivalled that of Christmas in terms of present giving. Even today, children are told that, if they are good, the souls of their relatives will return with gifts and sweets. Shop windows are filled with displays of uncannily real-looking fruits. They are moulded from martorana, an almond-based dough that is much nicer than marzipan and exquisitely hand coloured. Legend tells us that this tradition began in Palermo at the convent of the Martorana. The nuns decided to play a joke on the Archbishop when he arrived for his Easter visit. They created dozens of the marzipan fruits and painted them to appear natural. Then they strung them from trees in the cloister garden. The Archbishop drew his hands to his head in amazement gazing at the trees’ miraculous fruit-bearing season.

  Another spooky confection is the very white, almond-based biscuits called ‘Bones of the Dead’. They are long and flat with the occasional knob and a tray of them will be amusingly irregular in shape, resembling a pile of bones. Creepy? A little. Delicious? Absolutely! The ossi dei morti, as they are called, are made with the season’s first almonds, which are harvested in September. These nuts are always delicious but there is nothing like the intense flavour of freshly harvested almonds. Torrone, the chewy white nougat sprinkled with almonds, is another autumnal treat.

  Several elements combined to make this trip unlike the previous ones. When Elke told me the apartment overlooking Isola Bella was on a long-term let, I was disappointed. I had begun to think of it as ‘my’ apartment. Where would I stay? Then Genoveffa, my gattara friend, came up with the answer: ‘Don’t worry, Jenny. We have an apartment close to the Pensione Adele. I’ll give you a special price because you are doing all this wonderful work for the cats.’

  This time I had no exquisite view across the bay, but there were other advantages. I had only to open the door and I would step out into the centre of Taormina. At that time of year when the evenings were dark, it was comforting to find life going on around me. Across the road was a cafe, where I could meet cat people like Lisa.

  Gaunt with a small pinched face, Lisa seemed to carry the world’s worries on her narrow shoulders. Life, she told me, was almost too much to bear. Years ago, on a holiday from Sweden, she met Salvatore. There had been the initial romantic courtship, the coming and going between the two countries. Dazzled by Sicily and the kind of attention she had never found at home, Lisa had finally turned her back on that life and come to live with him. This is a story that I have heard over and over again of Northern European women seduced by the light and colour of the Mediterranean. It takes a strong woman, however, to endure the Italian male’s attachment to his mother.

  I asked Silvia, an Italian friend, to give me her views of the Italian male. This is what she said.

  Italian men: hopeless Mamma’s boys who can never cut the apron’s strings or dark, broody handsome heartthrobs? Female foreign visitors to the country seem to hold the opinion that indeed Italian men are charming, handsome, romantic hunks who call all ladies ‘bella’ and ‘bellissima’ and think nothing of hiring a gondola complete with opera singer to serenade you from a Venice canal. Italian women, on the contrary, are not so sure. Maybe because they know Italian men well as they are their partners, brothers, husbands… maybe because they feel a bit guilty. After all – alas – they are often their sons and they have contributed to creating that strangest of creatures: an Italian man.

  Convinced to be by God’s appointment the King of Creation, an Italian man still shuns domestic work either completely (‘e’ roba da donne’) in the case of more mature gentlemen or putting in a token effort that doesn’t remotely approach a 50/50 share of the work in the case of the younger generation, even if nowadays most women work out of the house too. For them every opportunity passed is an opportunity lost and even the more seasoned men think it is their absolute right, nay, duty to flirt with all women but especially those considerably younger than them… one of the reasons why Silvio Berlusconi was sadly so popular for so long.

  They also seem to think that testosterone prevents them from being able to hold an iron, learn to programme a washing machine or sweep a floor; but if they cook, then they are certainly worth at least two Michelin stars, of course! They are outwardly romantic with pretty strangers but emotionally stunted with their spouses: we love or hate them but in any case we are lumbered with them – unless, like me, you marry a British man. Naturally!

  Lisa and Salvatore each had their own side of the story. She thought him a bully, he believed her to be neurotic, but whatever the ups and downs in their lives, on one thing they were united: cats. They might glare at each other but could then be seen exchanging a smile at the sight of a feline. Passionately devoted to cats, they treated them as their own children.

  ‘We have six at the moment apart from the ones we feed,’ Lisa told me. ‘Two of them you neutered when you were in Taormina, but the rest…’

  ‘I’ll bring a trap up to Taormina,’ I offered. ‘And if you can get the cats to us, we’ll neuter them, too.’

  She gave me a wry smile. ‘If Salvatore doesn’t murder me first…’

  The Pensione Adele apartment was rather strange for it se
emed to be a repository for furniture and crockery. A huge sideboard with glass-fronted doors held an array of plates. Once, looking into the equally huge wardrobe, I was surprised to find a large gap between its base and the wall and found myself gazing down onto the shop below. But the bed was comfortable and I slept soundly despite the noisy nearby trattoria.

  News had spread round Letojanni and once again there was quite a crowd to witness the arrival of the spaymobile. This time Dorothea brought another vet, Rafaela, and two German volunteers. The forty traps were no longer a novelty as they had been glimpsed enough times around Letojanni the time before. Quite a queue developed as local people turned up and joined in the cat-trapping exercise. Dorothea and Rafaela operated almost without a pause from early morning until evening. By the time we went for a meal we were almost too tired to eat. The two German volunteers were also dedicated workers. As one of them told me, their holidays are spent on such expeditions. Over the next four-and-a-half days we neutered 140 cats and 3 dogs.

  I knew that a huge problem in Sicily is the many purebreed dogs, which are adopted as pets but later abandoned when the owners tire of the idea or want to go on holiday. The number of dogs thrown onto the motorway from a moving car during the summer months is appalling. Some of them are rescued and find a loving home; others are far less fortunate.

  One afternoon my phone rang.

  ‘Jenny? It’s Cesare!’ he shouted. ‘Listen, I have a dog with me that is very sick. Will your vets have a look at him?’

  Dorothea looked up from the operating table and nodded. ‘Yes, tell him to bring it here.’

  The dog, a Great Dane, was skeletal. This big, beautiful creature was reduced to a miserable wreck, every bone in its body protruding. It slathered at the mouth and was in a pitiable state. We stared at it, shocked. Dorothea left her work and came over to examine it.

  ‘It looks as if it is suffering from leishmania,’ she pronounced.