**Warning...very long post.***
Street Urchins
We are Americans living in Italy. Yes, I know it sounds like
a dream, but life is rarely lived as in a dream.
I love it here.
I am
reminded of what life was like when I was growing up, with a sense of community
and wholesomeness I have missed for a very long time.
And the food is natural and wonderful, the
air is clean, the water is potable and it is nearly impossible to find a bad
wine.
There are difficulties, such as learning an entirely new
language, dealing with Italian bureaucracy and, for the time being, getting
along without a car.
Add to that the
usual complaints of someone getting older, complete with aches and pains and
mounting fatigue.
It does, however, seem
that people live quite a long time here.
We did a brief sojourn in New Jersey in an “adult community.”
Lovely house, nice little garden, a “gym” of
sorts.
But the day we moved in and a
neighbor described it as “God’s waiting room” did not precisely fill my heart
with warmth and affection for the place.
Being surrounded by old people gets old very quickly!
And the
rules
they had!
We’re adults, right?
I can’t grow a vegetable?
I can’t decide what color to paint my
shutters?
I can’t bring my adult
daughter to the gym with me?
I chafed at
their arbitrary rules, the way they were rampantly cutting down trees and the
daily anticipation of finding out who died recently.
It felt very isolating and depressing.
Here, we live in a hill town of approximately twelve
thousand people.
A town built atop a
hill starting in the 12
th Century and continuing through the 16
th...and
today.
A central town of ancient
churches, monasteries, buildings and “terra cotta” homes made of stone and
brick, with cobblestone streets that wind this way and that.
It is not “booming” by any means, in fact,
the economy is struggling, yet the town bustles by day and evening, with a long
“pranzo” (lunch…the main meal of Italians) in the middle of the day.
It is a town populated by old and young and
everyone in between, which, to me, is the way people ought to live.
In my fantasy, before we actually got here, I pictured us
having a cat or two.
But my husband was
adamant, “No more cats!
We’re done with
cats!”
He didn’t ever want to clean a
litter box again, or smell one.
Yes, I pictured la bella vita, sitting on a bench with a
glass of wine in the cortile (courtyard) with the outer door open and the
afternoon sun streaming in, and a kitty schmoozing around my ankles.
Just an easy life with good food, clean water
and no appointments to keep.
That was
the dream.
The reality was that there is a burgeoning feral cat
population, particularly in our piazza, possibly because we are near a walkway
that has some woods and greenery, also possibly because there are nooks and
crannies and openings to vacant spaces where these cats can hide, stay
relatively warm and sleep.
One day last spring, three tiny kittens appeared beneath the
window or our neighbors across the street.
My neighbor, Marguerite, told me that she and her husband, Tony, feed
the cats what they can.
She also said
that Tony had placed some boxes for comfort inside various nooks for the cats
to use as shelters and beds.
I noticed these kittens nearly every day, two little gray
striped ones and one entirely black.
I
was also able to identify their mother.
Another lady down the block and around the bend of a small alley fed
them, too.
I ached for these little
babies.
We had our outer door restored by our other neighbor,
Domenico.
In order for him to do the
job, he removed the entire door...which is 600 years old and in four or five
parts.
This left our cortile (courtyard, pronounced core-tee-lay)
wide open and the little ones wandered in.
I didn’t say a word.
My husband
(“No more cats!”) set up a cardboard box with an old towel in it.
Sure enough, the kittens, and Mamma, used it
to nap in.
So, what followed, of course, was some food.
Just dry kibble.
But, well, the pet food here is relatively
inexpensive compared to the U.S., so they soon also got some “meatballs in
gravy.”
And names, they got names.
Not wonderful names, just some way to
differentiate one from the other.
Mamma was a no-brainer.
One tiny kitten had already been injured somehow, possibly by a larger
cat.
Her eye looked awful.
We called her “Pirate.”
The little black one was fierce about food,
sometimes smacking the litter mates in order to hog the food.
“Incubo” means nightmare in Italian, and that
got shortened to Ink.
The third kitten
had a chubby little chowder face…seemingly unkempt in a terribly cute way.
Scruff.
La famiglia
.
Things became problematic when the outer door was finished
and reinstalled.
Well, the lady around
the corner and Marguerite were feeding them, so…I started carting a tray
outside each day.
Oh, dear.
Sibling from a previous litter joined the gang as a
regular.
Sib was very timid and
skittish, but Sib would hang with Mamma and the kittens and soon got into the
routine.
There was another black cat, there were other interlopers
from time to time, but this was the core group.
(Baby Scruff)
At about three months of age, the babies trusted me enough
that we were able to get Pirate to the veterinarian.
The prognosis was not good.
“The eye is lost.”
She was very weak, breathing hard, too
thin….back “home” she had some water, just a little, a half-hearted bite of
food and settled down on our doormat inside the cortile as she basked in the
sun and gazed upon the piazza.
I believe
she died that day or the next.
We never
saw her again
Little Scruff also had an eye problem, in both eyes.
They were very goopy, with green and/or
yellow goop, sometimes glued shut.
I was
able to administer antibiotic eye drops.
He got so comfortable with me and the drops, I could do it just lifting
his little head up…giving each eye a little wipe with a clean tissue, and he
would happily go back to eating.
After his eyes recuperated, Scruff and I really bonded.
I confess, I was beginning to adore this cat,
this plain, ordinary little street urchin.
Just a little gray, striped kitty with a funny face, nothing
special.
Except he let me pet him, and
pick him up, and he learned his name, and he began purring and then he would
schmooze my legs and lean into a head pet.
I was smitten, but “No more cats!”
Well, it was soon apparent that the other black cat had had
kittens. We were walking with Harry on the passaggiata (walkway) and there was
black Mamma, tucked in a doorway of a vacant building, and three little heads
popped up in the grass.
Each one was
cuter than the other.
There was a tabby,
a soft gray one with a white bib and a tuxedo kitten, black and white.
It was not long before this family, too, came to dinner every
evening.
Now, instead of four, we had
eight.
Sometimes ten, depending on how
many rogues showed up.
Clearly, there is problem here.
I asked around.
“Does this town have any program for
neutering ferals?”
No.
Nothing.
I began to talk about it to my husband and was relieved and
surprised when he agreed that we could get as many of them neutered as
possible.
But how?
How? I said, well, the kittens are easy because they let me
handle them, but they aren’t old enough yet.
The thing is to get them to trust us, and they are doing that because
they get fed regularly.
Feeding time also morphed into play time.
I made a couple of aluminum foil balls that
the kittens loved to smack around the cortile after they ate.
We set Harry’s airplane travel kennel out in the
cortile and put a couple of boxes inside and sometimes one or two of them would
nap there,
other times they would just
play by sticking their paws through the openings, baiting whoever was
outside.
As far as the older ones, like Mamma and Sib, who would
never let me touch them, I ordered a Hav-A-Hart trap from the U.S.
It is used for wild animals and also feral
cats.
There is a trip inside for the
door, so the cat enters to get food, steps on the trip and the door closes
behind them.
Bam!
Then they can’t get out.
We had settled into rather enjoyable routines throughout the
Spring, Summer and into the Fall, received and figured out the trap, and we had
a plan with the veterinarian. The veterinarian was all for the plan because he
said that besides their lives being hard and miserable, pretty soon we were
going to have a hundred cats in our little piazza.
Cats here have three litters a year.
Three litters, say with three kittens…that’s
nine kittens from one cat.
Every year. Just
after the holidays we were getting ready to implement “the plan.”
That is when the police showed up at our door.
I didn’t go out, thinking it was just a delivery, but it was
taking a very long time.
I heard my
husband talking to someone, but that often happens if we see a neighbor
outside.
When he came inside he said
that there were three people at the door, the police captain (!!), a “vigili”…a
lower level official of some sort…and an unfriendly neighbor who is an attorney
and lives two doors down from us.
He said the attorney wouldn’t shut up, appeared very angry
and was talking over the “vigili” who was more or less speaking while looking
at the ground and the police officer seemed uncomfortable and bored.
Because two people were speaking at the same
time it was very difficult, near impossible to figure out what they were
saying.
“Gatti”…”cani”….cats, dogs…poop
in the street.
Bottom line….don’t feed
the cats anymore.
Another problem here, while on the subject of poop in the
street, is that people do not pick up after their dogs.
The town even installed “dog drops”…separate
green “eco” drops for dog poop, but still people don’t bother.
We do.
We have always picked up after Harry.
Everyone in this piazza, possibly the town, knows it, too.
They certainly see us enough.
That being said, yes, the cats were pooping in the
piazza.
Two points here…there have
ALWAYS been feral cats in this piazza.
Second, there has ALWAYS been someone around to feed them.
And while this trio also knocked on the doors of our friends
across the street, and Domenico, who has nothing at all to do with it, and the
other lady down the block, it felt very much like we were being singled out for
a reprimand because we are foreigners.
After this incident, Domenico came over to assure us we were
“not in trouble” and that this guy is a “bad neighbor.”
Yes, well, we knew that…who calls the police
over something like this?
Why not just
talk to us?
My husband was periodically
cleaning up the messes from the cats, too…….not that anyone screaming at our
door was interested in that tidbit.
Later, Tony and Marguerite came over to assure us of the
same.
Then Marguerite promised to help
us with “the plan” by driving us to the veterinarian.
(It is a rather long walk, especially if you
are carrying something.)
THAT was the
most wonderful thing!
They also said that they were going to continue to feed the
cats….and so was the lady down the street.
So, we did, too…under cover of darkness…down an alley…on a piece of
newspaper…so there was no evidence in the morning and then we threw the paper
away.
At this point, initiating “the plan” seemed to take on a new
urgency.
Also, large, rogue, prowling
male cats were showing up.
The next
mating season was fast approaching
.
After a week or so of sneaking out after dark, we started to
feed the ferals in the cortile.
They
trusted us enough that I could close the outer door while they ate inside.
No one could see them.
One evening a newbie showed up.
This cat looked vaguely familiar.
She walked with her tail high, so I could see
she was female.
She walked right in like
she already knew everyone.
Right away,
she let me pet her.
This was very
strange.
Then I recalled the third of
the black mamma’s litter – the tortoise shell kitten.
Where had she been?
Why was she here?
Observing her the following days, I had the distinct
impression she was going into “heat.”
She would sidle up to Scruff, who was indifferent to her advances.
She would sidle up to me, she would sidle up
to Harry.
And she started to try and
stay inside after all the others had eaten and decided it was time to hit the
streets again.
Tee
I kept telling my husband this cat was not feral, not like
the others.
Had someone taken her in and
then decided to dump her?
I don’t know
why…but she won him over.
Not only that,
he said to me, out of the blue one evening, “Well, if we get a large enough
enclosure, we could keep three cats in the back room.” ????
Three?
Three cats?
Mr. “No more cats!”
said we could keep three?
Be still my
heart!!!
We moved Harrys kennel back inside, to the back room, set up
the water and food dishes and a small cat pan.
T.S. (Tortoise Shell) got shortened to Tee, Missy Tee, Tee-Tee.
And she loved it inside.
She was tired, she was hungry and she was
very, very affectionate.
She also had terrible, terrible diarrhea.
Each of us would have to get up in the middle
of the night at some point and clean her pan, the odor was horrendous and
wafted throughout the entire apartment.
There is an over-the-counter deworming treatment here, which
I quickly bought.
It requires two
administrations, two weeks apart.
It is
also recommended that it be repeated after two months.
After her second dose, Tee’s condition
improved and we were able to sleep through the night again.
Once she seemed rested and healthy enough, we walked her to
the vet for spaying because I didn’t want to bother Marguerite since we were
going to keep little Missy Tee and we could carry her in a nice, lightweight
over the shoulder cat carrier. Tee came home to recuperate in the kennel and all was
well.
I ordered a cat “playpen.”
It is as tall as I am, with four front doors, two up and two down, three
“perches” and I added a cat hammock.
Tee
was so happy to be in this little cat palace, loving her soft perches and her
hammock.
Being January, in this part of Italy, it can get cold.
We hadn’t had any snow, but there were nights
that the temperatures dropped to freezing.
One such night, one of the predatory male cats was outside, terrorizing
Scruff.
I was worried and beside
myself.
I heard howling.
I was in the living room when the door opened and my husband
marched in carrying Scruff into the house! Scruffy!
My boy!
He went into the kennel, Tee’s former
digs.
Poor, sweet Scruff seemed
exhausted.
Was he in shock or just
totally spent?
He ate and slept for an entire
weekBy this time, we were letting Tee
out of the playpen to explore the house, to be more of a normal cat.
I tried to coax Scruff out of the kennel but
he wanted no part of it. He even closed the kennel door on himself.
“No thanks!
I’m good, right here.”
We walked him to the veterinarian, too, got him neutered and
dewormed.
Scruff was on his way from
being the “Prince of the Piazza” to being a pampered indoor kitty.
Scruff 10 mos.
We had another unexpected addition, and luckily we had an
additional cage.
While I was feeding the usual suspects in the cortile, little Demon came in,
too.
Demon, when a baby kitten, was a
gigantic loudmouth.
When I walked
outside with the food last summer he would wail and echo through the
piazza.
He made it hard for me to move
because he also tried to climb up my legs!
Hence, the name “Demon.”
He’s a
“tuxedo” cat, black and white and oh, so cute.
I noticed in the fall that his breathing had become labored.
He had a loss of appetite, too.
Thoughts of helping him flew out the window
because he would not, under any circumstances, let me touch him, not even when
he was eating.
This particular night was miserable in every way… cold,
windy and rainy.
Demon came in, sniffed
at the food but just sat by the others.
In
spite of the weather, the regulars all wanted out when they were done
eating.
Not Demon.
He was looking for a place to hide.
In my mind, I wondered if he was looking for
a place to curl up and die.
To my surprise, as he huddled in a corner, he let me
approach him.
He let me pet his tiny
head.
He let me pick him up. I believe
he had given up, just given up and was totally spent. I rushed into the house, my husband quickly got the new cage
ready and we decided we would do what we could in spite of him looking, at this
point, like a hospice case. I was able to interest him in some wet food and was somewhat
amazed he even made it through the night.
We transported him to the vet as soon as possible and were
told he has severe asthma.
It is a type
of asthma that is common in street cats and caused by a transmittable
virus.
The doctor gave us some steroid
medication to give him.
Each small pill
had to be cut into 1/8.
Honestly, it was
just a speck.
But, this cat maybe weighed
a pound…he is half the size he should be for his age and nothing but bones.
After a week and a half of medication we brought him
back.
The doctor told us he was only
slightly better and had us try another medication along with the steroid on a
strict schedule.
He was also put on a
stronger worm medicine as he was eating well but still horribly skinny.
I started keeping a daily calendar
.
In the meantime, we trapped Mamma, Ink and Scruff’s mother.
Marguerite drove us to the doctor and everything went smoothly, except Mamma
was not happy at all.
She cried constantly,
all day, all night with small respites when she finally drifted off to sleep.
She was desperate to be released and after three days, we
took the cage to the outer door and off she went like a streak.
She and Ink and Sib, however, returned for dinner!
The next catch was Calze.
He is soft gray with a white bib and white feet.
Calze means “socks” or “stockings” in
Italian.
He was so easy I barely
remember it.
No fuss, no fight.
Easy.
His recuperation was easy, too. No dramatics, no crying,
just a happy little guy loving getting regular meals and sleeping someplace
comfy and warm.
Sooooooooooooo, we
wondered about releasing him.
We decided
not to.
Three indoor cats became
four.
And it’s not my fault. It wasn’t
even my idea!
At this point, Demon was showing mild improvement and I just
could not saddle him with that moniker anymore.
Demon morphed into Imp.
Now that
his eyes were brighter, he was finding his voice again and wanting some
affection, Imp seemed to suit this tiny tuxedo very well.
Imp
The last to be trapped was Ink.
And although she did not raise a ruckus for 3
days, she was the most difficult of all.
It took four of us fifteen minutes to maneuver her in the cage to a point
where the doctor could sedate her.
She
was screaming, all claws extended, trying to bite anything she could.
It was a nightmare, alright.
After that, though, she settled into reluctant
recuperation.
And she, like Mamma,
returned for her dinner after being released.
Scruff frightened us one evening with an episode of
difficult breathing and a cough.
He,
too, has asthma, but not as severe as Imp.
He is on a Lysine supplement and has improved very nicely.
We are still waiting for another large playpen cage, but in
the meantime, the little gang has begun to settle into a bit of a routine.
First thing every morning all cat pans are
cleaned up.
We found a corn based litter
that not only has no dust (for the asthmatics) but it is totally biodegradable
and can be flushed down the toilet.
Next comes breakfast with appropriate medications.
Then comes playtime.
Tee has had the run of the house for a while.
Calze and Scruff have an alternating
schedule.
One reason is because they are
all still in varying stages of medications and the other is that they are
kittens…they never hold still.
Tee is
like a little butterfly flitting all over the house.
Calze likes to play with leashes we have
attached to the cages, like they are snakes or something wiggling around.
He loves to pounce on them and “catch”
them.
Scruff does the same, but he also raids Harry’s food
bowl.
He’s a spaghetti thief.
And, I need to get some scratching mats for
them to save the furniture, so we have to monitor them a bit.
Calze
Today we did let the three of them out at once and it was
quite the free for all.
Leap frog,
ambush, wrestle, chase…all over the place. After play, it is naptime.
Little Imp is still too sick and weak to come out unless it
is just to sit in my lap.
Pretty soon, it’s dinner time, followed by another
recreation hour.
Then it is evening,
time to head back to the playpens, play a little ball inside, bat a leash
around and roll around in a hammock until bed.
We were told that the feral cats here can have three litters
a year.
We successfully prevented three
females from having three litters.
Unfortunately, there appear to be two, or possibly three
pregnant females still out there.
We
will be ready for the next round and more experienced, too.
I am allowing one obviously pregnant female into the cortile
to eat not just to trap her, but to have her bring the kittens so I can gain
their trust early and stop the cycle.
One final note…our veterinarian spoke to the Mayor of our
town and told him what we are trying to do.
He mentioned our problem neighbor. However, the Mayor approves, and I am
allowed to feed the feral cats in my cortile, no matter who may be screaming at
our door.
March, 2020
June Volz
