I have to be at Catania airport at 7.30am. The cat will take the Alitalia flight to Rome at 10am. Mark will pick her up and put her on the next British Airways flight. So the cat will arrive at Heathrow around 4.00pm that same day, where Sadie has to pick her up and bring her to her new home. This way I think it is perfect and not too stressy at all for Katarina. I will let you know as soon as Mark has told me the exact travelling day, which will not be before 4 or 5 of September. Katarina can stay at La Manna’s office, she has completely adapted to the place and he will not ask for any extra money. I will pick her up in the evening before travelling and keep her with me that night because we have to leave here in Taormina at 6.00am to be punctually at the airport.
I have found that all this is being done very professionally by everybody, and I myself are doing this whole fatigue deliberately, because I like animals more than people – ha ha!
I will tell Mark on the phone that Katarina is a very calm cat and does not need tranquillisers. Please, Sadie, can you mail your name and address to me or La Manna again today; he wants to compare it with the one he already has before going to the ASL tomorrow. I hope that everything is clear now and I wish you good luck with Katarina.
I am still trying to find the right transport-cage. Even that has ‘special rules’. I cannot believe how complicated it is to ship a cat from Italy to England. Meanwhile, the cat is doing brilliantly.
After a long search Elke finally found the right transportation basket, which conformed to both airlines’ requirements, and was awaiting news from Mark on the date of the flights.
It was now September and I was standing in the magnificent gardens of Claude Monet in Giverny, Normandy when Sadie’s triumphant email arrived:
Kat arrived very late last night. She is absolutely lovely. She is in our bedroom and conservatory, just so that she gets used to that part of the house first. She is using her litter tray (she is very clean). She had fresh salmon for dinner and ate biscuits and a little meat this morning!
She certainly can jump! She slept in her little cat bed for an hour and then arrived on our bed and slept cuddled up on my pillow, purring. I’m surprised by how well she gets around, actually. She is very curious, and affectionate. She kept us awake all night purring and trying to sleep on our heads. Maybe she remembers us…
Over the following weeks, Sadie kept me posted: ‘Katarina is very cuddly and is quite playful. She hunts and plays based on movement and sound – I think that she is a very clever cat. She is quite fearless.’
A day or so later, the photographs arrived. They showed an adorable and contented Katarina and brought tears to my eyes.
Sadie’s most recent email told me: ‘She is now a healthy, happy eighteen-month-old cat, who not only circumnavigates around our home with ease, but who is a talented escape artist and climber. She enjoys the garden and was house-trained from day one. Her eating habits are questionable, and we have to compete with her when opening cupboards, or the fridge. The dog and she have become a tag-team for stealing food. She is very skilled at this, much to the dog’s delight. She licks everyone that comes into the house to visit, and occasionally has to be removed from our guests’ laps after they have endured her grooming them for ten minutes. She particularly likes beards. As we speak she is lying on her back, in a disused brown cardboard box by the Christmas tree. She has a full belly and a smile on her face. That pretty much sums up her new life here.’
Elke commented: ‘I am very happy to know that the cat is in good hands. Thinking about the whole thing now, I have some comments to say: Now that I know how the transport and papers for the UK for animals work, I would probably do it again, because in the beginning nobody knew how different everything is to the UK in contrast with other European countries. I would recommend Catsnip pass on this information and give the appropriate addresses – for example, Mark’s in Rome – so that people know what they have to do. He knows every rule of every country for import and export of animals, and was a huge help for me. With the right information it is not too difficult to get things done but it takes some time and patience.’
And money! Sadie ended up with a £3,000 bill. As she said: ‘It’s such a shame that there is not a revised/alternative way to bring rescue animals to other parts of Europe. It actually disgusts me that all the money I have paid has gone to BA, rather than as a donation to Oscar or a cat rescue organisation in Sicily. I’m imagining that £3,000 would have paid for quite a few cats to be treated/spayed. Morally, in such circumstances as this, I feel that it’s abhorrent to make fees so high. No wonder no one is willing to go through this. I would have been so much happier if I knew that airlines/organisations would waive some of their fees (VAT at least) to donate it so that the issue in Sicily could be addressed. There are so many people who would be willing to help if the cost wasn’t so vast. It’s just been so ridiculous that I’m furious that this system hasn’t been changed. Nothing is given towards raising awareness in Sicily or towards rescue organisations.’
I thoroughly agree, Sadie, but rejoice that there are people like you and Eddie who care.
THIRTY-SEVEN
I Come to Terms with Sicily
Another year has passed and autumn has come round again. Once again I am back in Sicily.
The first chestnuts of the season, their shiny, charred coats splitting to reveal the creamy coloured meat within. Prosecco in crystal, fluted glasses, a vase of perfect pink roses… It looks like a still life painting. We are in Umberto Martorana’s apartment at the end of the Corso. He has invited me for a drink and to talk about the Taormina of once upon a time.
The building is unremarkable from the outside; it does not prepare you for the gem within. Every aspect is carefully chosen and exquisite, from the Sicilian enamels in his bedroom to the alabaster busts against the walls, the pictures in his elegant living room. Beautiful carpets lie on the polished wood floors – a proper setting for such a cultivated man. He paints. His pictures are deceptively simple: two countrywomen against a frieze of olive trees, a shrine to the Madonna crowded with simple offerings, water reflecting the multicolours of a fishing boat – quintessentially Sicilian. He travels. From the books precisely placed around this room I gather he is also an extensive reader.
He has promised to show me his photograph albums, the images of lords and ladies, actors and writers, socialites – memories of another, more elegant Taormina, a time of fancy dress parties and dinners, cocktails at expat villas and visiting yachts.
Those were the disappearing years of a belle epoque that reigned at the end of the nineteenth, beginning of the twentieth centuries: an idyllic time.
It was at the Hotel Vittorio in 1891 Oscar Wilde took a room. Thirty-seven years old, he had left his wife to embrace his true sexuality, which would lead to imprisonment and forced labour. The literary genius would be ostracised and live out his last miserable years in Paris.
In those early years of the twentieth century, the best touring companies in Sicily played spectacles and operettas at the Greek theatre. The cabarets had a fatal influence on the nobility from Catania who, falling for a pair of lovely legs, gambled their marriages and inheritances. Some were reduced by their impossible and violent passion to commit suicide in a hotel room and often, to save Taormina’s face, they were hurriedly dispatched.
Closing the albums, I sign Umberto’s famous visitors book. I sip my Prosecco and nibble those first chestnuts of autumn. They seem somehow significant: mature fruit but containing spring and summer. I feel I have made a long journey and now come ‘home’ as I sit in Umberto’s peaceful apartment, the sounds of the Corso far away. It is as if, this evening, all the long negotiations with Sicily have ended and we have reached a kind of truce, even though it can never be more than an uneasy one. A balance has been restored and, once again, I can see not only the shadows but the sunshine as well.
In the morning I go down to Isola Bella and gaze at that view as if I cannot take it in enough. I gaze and gaze. Light per
meates everything, piercing the heat haze that shrouds the bay, the spume that fans out behind a boat. It illuminates another pagan world, tranquil and joyful. It is what one yearns for during those grey days in Northern Europe, to be made alive again by the light. I can understand how it is that Emilio paints and paints this scene yet again. There is another quality about Sicily, which he once described to me. He related how he took an Englishman – a man who was not accustomed to expressing his feelings – to stand at the top of Isola Bella.
‘He was enchanted and turned to me and said, “You can touch the air.”’
As I wander over the isthmus and back, I think of all those times when leaving the place, this small island in the Mediterranean, I would pause and gaze down Isola Bella, committing it to my memory. Isola Bella has been a recurring theme in my life in Sicily as it has Elke’s.
That September day, she was in reminiscent mood: ‘My first footsteps into Sicily were in the town of Messina. My future husband, Marquis Emilio Bosurgi, took me from Rome to Messina in a wagon lit sleeping car – a long trip from Rome to Sicily at that time. When we arrived at the train station of Messina I was extremely disappointed. I had imagined the island of Sicily similar to the Caribbean with sandy beaches, palm trees and hot weather. Nothing like that: Messina was ugly, the weather grey and cold (February) and no Hula-Hula girls, no white sand beaches with palm trees.
‘But Emilio said: “Wait and see when we get to Taormina, everything will be different.” We took his Alfa-Romeo sports car to Taormina, parked on the road in front of a little island called Isola Bella. To get to it we had to climb down a steep staircase to a stony beach, walk along it until we reached the narrowest distance between land and island. Emilio told me to put on long rubber boots and to follow him slowly, walking through rather high water and waves. But I did not put my feet firmly enough on the ground and the next big wave just knocked me over. Here I was in the icy-cold water, Emilio grabbed me by my hair and I got back on my feet. Thank God I had a suitcase with dry clothes, which was carried by a servant on his head, so it would not get wet!
‘Here we were on this mysterious little island. I was soaking wet and Emilio was having the largest laugh about my first meeting with the Sicilian sea. There was a nice chimney in the house on top of the island and I changed my clothes and dried the wet stuff at the nice cosy fire. We had good Sicilian wine and Emilio cooked a huge steak.
‘Next morning: what a surprise, no more strong wind, no more heavy sea, but the most beautiful sunshine instead, and the flat sea had a violet-blue colour. What a change from yesterday! It was a breathtakingly beautiful atmosphere. Unfortunately I had to go back to work in Germany, but on my next vacation in summer I was back in Taormina and after a year I gave up my job and moved to Sicily. From then on most of the time I spent on Isola Bella, taking care of Emilio’s customers and friends, showing them the island and inviting them for lunch.
‘Slowly, Emilio constructed many rooms on the island, one for each member of the family. Every room had a bathroom, a chimney and a little corner to boil tea or coffee. Many times I was angry because he spent all his free time with his workers constructing new places and studying a method so as not to ruin the original look of the island. Everything was made to look like little caves, with the walls carefully covered with the natural rocks of the island. The result was to create a unique work of art from nature.
‘It was the happiest time of my life,’ she continued. ‘We lived a wonderful twenty years, and really loved it, doing a big favour to the town of Taormina. Then it was requisitioned and we had to leave this corner of paradise. It fell into dilapidation.’
Maybe one day Isola Bella will return to its original beauty. Nevertheless, it will never forget those splendid years when all those important personages walked on her in admiration.
Coming from different backgrounds, though both lovers of this beautiful island, somehow Elke and I were brought together by our love of cats and our desire to give them happier lives. But our affection for Sicily is tempered by the fight to rescue its felines; there is still a long way to go.
I think of those words of D.H. Lawrence as he and Frieda prepared to leave Taormina in 1923. They sat with their luggage packed up, ready to leave Villa Fontana Vecchia.
‘My heart is trembling with pain – the going away from home and the people and Sicily. Perhaps Frieda is right and we shall return to our Fontana. I don’t say no. I don’t say anything for certain. Today I go – tomorrow I return. So things go.’
So things go. I will return.
ADDENDUM
A Practical Chapter
It is now twelve years since the day Andrew and I found that badly injured black and white cat. Although, like many other tourists, I had fed stray cats for a long time before that, this was my first experience of dealing with such an emergency. I learned the hard way and have continued to learn ever since.
I’ve learned, for example, to distinguish between the cat with a cosy home and loving owner and the feline that has never known anything other than life on the streets. As Guy, my wonderful UK vet, has said, the welfare of these feral animals is paramount and above human feelings, a question of doing what is best for them rather than being sentimental. This might sound harsh and it is sometimes difficult to carry out. Unlike their domesticated cousins, these randagi don’t have anyone who will nurse them through a lengthy and possibly complicated period of treatment or disabilities that make leading a normal life possible. Even if they are lucky and receive some first aid, their ultimate fate will be to survive on their own. You have to decide whether this might cause them distress and danger at not being able to defend themselves.
The eye disease I’ve mentioned earlier is rife among kittens in Sicily. If it’s not treated in time, this ultimately leads to blindness. The question has to be asked: is it right to allow these small creatures to struggle for an existence in their feral world if there is not an assured source of regular food? They may not be able to scavenge and will therefore die a miserable death.
Unlike pet cats, which often don’t get on with other felines, feral colonies frequently develop naturally. These are usually made up of groups of related females and the size of colony is directly related to the availability of food, water and shelter. Cats are extremely resourceful creatures and can adapt to many different habitats.
Those within the colony recognise each other by sharing their scent through rubbing against each other. Although they appear close, they are not completely reliant upon the others and will hunt and eat alone. If an unfamiliar cat intrudes on their territory, they will soon see it off. After neutering, a feral cat should be released back into its territory as quickly as possible – this is so the cat will not lose the communal scent and end up being rejected by other cats in the colony.
As I came to understand this, I learned another valuable lesson: only in rare circumstances should you remove a cat from its colony or indeed relocate the entire colony. Relocation of feral cats is extremely stressful for them, as they become very dependent on the familiarity of their own environment. Neither should they be released just anywhere. An appropriate habitat needs to be found and the cats require a period of adjustment while they learn where they can find food and shelter. Most often, there is no reason to remove them from their habitats. Ferals become well adapted to their territory and can live safely and contentedly in alleyways, parking lots, vacant lots, backyards and a host of other locations – urban, suburban and rural. Yet another consideration: if all or most of the cats are neutered, taking them somewhere else can create a vacuum. Other unneutered cats may move into the area and start the cycle all over again.
I made a bad mistake before I understood this. It happened during a neutering trip in Letojanni as I did the rounds with my trap, traipsing up and down streets and out into the countryside in an amazing November heat. I found a mother and her kittens in the derelict remains of an empty house close to a busy exit roundabout and was terrified the you
ng ones might run under a passing car. A friend agreed to take them in her car to what we believed to be a safe place in the country. In doing so, we removed them from their known source of food and water, and reports came back that they had died. It was totally the wrong thing to do and I regret it to this day. Just another example of confusing feral with domesticated cats.
Remember my experience with Lizzie and my first encounter with a feral cat? She was anxious and fearful, her one desire to escape. Of course, she didn’t understand I was trying to help her. It is really not advisable to try to socialise a grown feral cat. If you are prepared to devote time and attention, however, you can work with young feral kittens and persuade them to become affectionate and loving companions. It’s not something that will happen overnight but can be a rewarding experience. Yes, it’s possible to transform a spitting, hissing ball of fluff, but the time it takes depends on their age. Just about anyone can socialise a kitten that is eight weeks or younger. Those between two and four months of age often demand more time and skill.
There are really no set rules as each kitten will learn at a different rate and thus become accustomed to you. Be patient.
When tourists contact me for help with a small and apparently lost kitten, my first question is always: ‘Are you certain the mother isn’t around?’ The kitten may have simply strayed or the mother is keeping herself from view. It is also a good idea to check whether the cats are being fed by a gattara, a cat lady, in case she feels some sense of ownership. That was Dawn’s dilemma when she spotted Lionel. As she told me: ‘We were having a much-needed holiday but it was somewhat spoilt by seeing this poor little ginger and white cat sitting outside someone’s gate. He had scratched himself bald in places and seemed to have a coloured liquid drooling from his mouth. We passed him every time we went into town and, as cat lovers with a thoroughly spoilt feline at home, we felt we must do something. However, we couldn’t be sure that the person we saw feeding other cats might object if we took him away. We got as far as contacting the vet but then, because we don’t speak Italian, were nervous of creating a confrontation. Reluctantly, we had to abandon the idea.’
The Great Sicilian Cat Rescue Page 22
