Category: My Italian Cat

It Takes a Village to Save a Cat

Gattina on our furniture

Before I left Italy, our neighbor friend Claudia had readily agreed to help me find a home for the cat. I told her that if she did not find one, I would somehow bring Gattina to Florida. In the meantime, Claudia or her husband fed the cat daily. 

Every morning as my Florida cats howled for their breakfast, I first checked my phone for a message from Claudia. I had emailed her some pictures of Gattina. She sent one to a mutual friend who owns a restaurant and displayed it “for adoption” at their cash register. Another photo went to an animal group Claudia knows. 

Gattina's picture at the restaurant
Gattina’s picture at the restaurant

Our workers were at the house. I wondered if they fed her, or petted her, or stepped on her. I worried about the rubble pile, her safe haven. They would soon remove it; the backhoe was staged when we left. 

A week passed. Gattina came around every time Claudia arrived to feed her. I researched the labyrinthine requirements to bring a cat to Florida. At minimum, I would have to change my return ticket and stay longer. 

Two weeks before we returned to Italy, I got an email from Claudia. She had asked her friend Mary, a fellow animal lover, for ideas for our cat. Mary spoke to the couple who own the horse farm where she rides and they agreed to take her. After visiting the vet and getting her shots, she would join a dog and another rescue cat and get trained to be around horses. The couple would feed and care for her and she would have a warm dry place to call home.  

When we pulled into our driveway she ran toward us. She still climbed my legs and walked between them. She still slept in the nearest window, and were it not for our screens, she would have walked inside. She still jumped in my lap. 

Gattina in the kitchen window

I spoke to her in Italian so she would understand her new cat mom and dad. She played with the sprinkler flags planted in the ground and walked on our furniture like she owned it. I tried in vain to teach her to walk alongside me.

A few days before we would leave Italy and Gattina, we lured her out of her hiding spot down the road and Claudia and I took her to the vet. She howled in Claudia’s cat carrier for the twenty minute drive.

The vet gently lifted Gattina from the carrier and frowned as her hands felt around the trembling cat. She shook her head, speaking in Italian to Claudia. “She’s pregnant,” I said, recognizing the word. Claudia nodded, her lips pursed. Since about the time she found us for food. “She’s too thin,” the vet said and put Gattina back in the carrier and opened her datebook. Her first availability to spay Gattina was in a few days. I would be in Florida. Claudia would have to coax her from her den. 

I said goodbye to Gattina on our patio. I gave her a lot of pork leftovers, petted her, and told her to be good for her new mommy. My tears dropped onto the terracotta tiles. 

Gattina playing with the sprinkler flag

The day of her operation I kept one eye on my email. It had taken Claudia an hour to get the cat out of hiding and into the carrier, but her surgery went fine. She would recuperate at the vet’s office for a two days, then Mary would pick her up and keep her for a few weeks. 

Claudia forwarded me Mary’s first update on Gattina, she was wondering what to call her. Claudia asked if she could name her Ellie. At Mary’s house, Ellie had her own bathroom and even jumped to sleep in a basket in the windowsill. The vet came to Mary’s house to give Ellie her vaccinations and she would rest at Mary’s for a couple of weeks before going to the horse farm.

Just before Mary was to bring Ellie to the farm, Karen, a expat friend of Mary’s fell in love with Ellie and wanted her. So Ellie joined three other cats in Karen’s house with a cat door and no cars nearby to worry about. The last I heard, Ellie was eating like a horse, playing with the beaded curtains, and impatiently waiting for permission to play outside. I’d like to think she sleeps in the windowsill. 

My Italian Cat

Gattina howling from the terrace

“I’m not sure what’s wrong,” the flight attendant said and gave me a glass of prosecco and a handful of kleenexes, “But a prosecco always helps.”
“Thank you.” I said, clutching the glass in one hand and the tissues in the other.
I had been crying off and on for the last 12 hours as we left our Italian home to fly back to our Florida one.
“How could I tell her it’s about a cat?” I asked my husband Matt.

Two weeks earlier Matt said that he had seen a kitten on top of the construction rubble pile by our driveway.
“Was it my gatto nero?” I asked. Last fall, I had fed an older black cat with bad eyesight and had thought he was not long for this world. I had not seen him on our previous trip in February.
“No, this one was smaller and lighter colored.”
I had seen a tiny kitten in February, in an olive grove across the street. It saw me and froze. I tossed some cat treats towards it, but it ran away. I wondered if this was the same kitten.

The next day, I was hanging laundry on the patio clothesline and heard “mraiowww.” And another and another. A tiny calico face peered around the house from the sidewalk. “Mraiowww,” She wailed, closing her eyes as she howled and slowly approached me. “Ciao gattina.” She was a beautiful mix of white, grey, and light orange. I went inside to get cat treats and she ran away. But when I piled some treats on the patio, she scampered back and devoured them. The kitten in February who had run from treats in fear, was, three months later, devouring them on our doorstep.

I crouched down and extended my fist. She smelled it, eyeing me, then walked around me. She was pitifully thin, covered in sharp burrs, and dotted with several wounds, one particularly nasty looking on the back of her neck. A snail was stuck to the inside of an ear. Her big golden-green eyes were crusted with a dark discharge. She let me pet her as she ate treats. Her fur was matted, she hosted a few visible insects, and the end of her tail was bent and painful to touch.

Gattina at the front door

Matt came out to see our new arrival. “If you feed it, it will never leave.” He said. 

“She’s terribly thin and there’s something wrong with her. We can’t just ignore her.” 

The cat darted away when I stood up. I threw some treats down the patio, their crunchy texture tinkled on the terracotta, but she did not move her head or chase after them. I tossed some closer to her and she smelled around until she had eaten them all. 

I walked to the clothesline to finish my laundry. Gattina ran in between my legs, getting tangled. She hissed when I got too close, and again when I accidentally stepped on her. I moved so she would be on my right side, she jumped to the middle of my legs. I tried keeping her to my left, again she dashed between my legs. She had never walked with a human. I edged forward, legs wide, head down, cat underfoot.

For dinner that night, Matt grilled meat and vegetables. Gattina took up residence on an old bath rug we had put by the screen door we rarely used. I brought her a plate of leftovers. With a full belly, she did not wail. 

Gattina in the grill the next day after licking the grates

When I went downstairs for coffee the next morning she was waiting on the bathmat, howling. I brought her some food, and wearing rubber gloves, I wiped the discharge from her eyes, removed the snail from her ear, peeled off several ticks, a few thorns, and many burrs embedded into her fur. I put neosporin on her wounds. Perhaps my role was to provide palliative care for cats.

She drank from a puddle in the walkway to the pool, passing the full water dish. I walked toward her and she jumped up my legs, rubbing her face on my calves. Gattina underfoot, I lolloped to show her the treats she had missed the day before. We were here for two weeks. What would happen to her after we left?

Watch Gattina jump on my legs

In the following weeks, as we worked outside, Gattina roamed our muddy yard and napped under our lounge chairs, or on the outdoor sofa, leaving pawprint paths. When we were in the house, she slept in the nearest windowsill. When we pulled into the driveway she would leave her hiding spot next to the rubble pile before we were out of the car.

Her eyes cleared and her wounds improved. She started grooming herself and drank out of her water bowl. When I woke up at two in the morning coughing, having developed a cold, Gattina meowed in unison from her perch in our window then jumped on the roof to meet me at the bathroom window. 

We found a mouse head on our bedroom terrace. The rest of the unlucky creature was near the patio. 

“See, she does know how to hunt,” Matt said. 

“Yes, but she does not appear to know what to do with it.” 

“Sure she does. She brought her mom a trophy.” 

One afternoon I sat in my hanging chair in our casetta to watch the mountains. Gattina had been napping in the sun. She put a paw on the chair and jumped onto my lap, kneaded my legs, and nestled into a tiny ball. I petted her and heard, for the first time, her purr. 

“I’ve always wanted a lap cat,” I said to Matt when he came out.
“Maybe you can train the three we have at home,” he said.
I wondered how they would react if I brought home a fourth. Ian and Marcello would struggle but Macchia might not mind. It was difficult but not impossible to bring an Italian cat to the USA.

Two nights before our departure Matt and I were enjoying a glass of wine in the casetta. Matt stretched out on the outdoor sofa, I was in my hanging chair. Gattina jumped onto his leg and laid on it, snuggling in for a nap. He petted her and scratched her under her chin, and she curled up in his lap. I brought his wine closer so he would not disturb her. The first tear trickled down my cheek.

To be continued…