The Cats

Firstly, I must state that although I like most animals Pauline cannot stand cats.

Here at Finca Manolo we have two resident cats.   When I say resident I do not mean they live in the house.   They are outdoor cats but are fed by Terry, father of Sue Brown who, with her husband Trevor, own the property.   Terry lives just down the road and his first job of the day is to feed and water the two cats.

I know one cat is called Marmy because she is a marmalade cat.   The other is a tabby, so lets call her Tabby.   They spend most of their day lazing around, watching us swim in the pool.   Towards the end of the day the tension mounts.   This is when a couple of neighbouring cats come on site and our two take measures to move them off.   There begins a quiet howling from Marmy whilst Tabby usually sits on a wall watching the action.   The cats face up and the howling starts to get louder and louder.   The visitors sit there and stare at Marmy as she issues her warning.   Eventually, they start to move slowly away and the tension relaxes.

It doesn't end here because they keep on returning during the evening.   The howling becomes quite scary once it has gone dark.   One of the visiting cats is completely black, so how Marmy can see it in the darkness I cannot tell.   Perhaps she sees the "cat's eyes".   All this slow action goes on in the dark as we eat our evening meal just outside the kitchen door.   When this isn't happening our two cats attend the table in the hope of leftover food.

They are two real characters and I have got to know them well.   Last year when Terry and his wife, Eileen, came round for drinks Marmy was happy to jump up on Terry's lap.   But for the rest of the time no cat offers to sit on my lap and they are not encouraged to do so.

On the day we arrived we had an agonised text message from Sue, our daughter.   She has three cats and the oldest is Felix.   He is over twenty years old.   The news was that the previous evening Felix had been attacked by a dog and had run away.   Half the neighbourhood was out looking for him.   the fear was that he was dead somewhere, following the attack.   Sue was heart broken at the thought of him dying that way.   The following day I had a text message - "He's back!"    So all is well again.   I used to have a dog and when he died I was lost for 3 days afterwards.   We do get so attached to our pets.   I decided at the time, "Never again!"   That is how it has been.   I prefer to let others keep dogs and I will make a fuss of them.