My Italian Cat

“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.

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. 

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?

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…