​Wow, it’s been so long! I can’t believe it, where does the time go etc etc???

Just sneaking in under the rollerdoor as June disappears, so the right hand side of the website registers a slightly less scary gap in blogs than it would if I had left it until July (tomorrow). Obviously much has happened since the last blog in January, the ‘Before Times’, but very little has happened as well. Time seems to have done some strange things of late.

We are now, in rural Galicia, almost back to normal and there is hope – albeit with a fear of sprouts* - that we are now firmly in the ‘After Times’ of the pandemic. I think there is quite a way to go for this pandemic and I’m not complaining about being here. In fact, after years of procrastination or perhaps just sheer laziness, we have started a vegetable garden, and have been pulling out gorgeous lettuces daily.
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And what about the cats? Well, all is rather stable here in the village. Here’s a pic of Chubby Chops II in what our neighbours call his sentry box, and this photo sums things up. Nothing to see here! We have achieved our aim of having a stable colony of adult feral cats, and that’s rather wonderful. I think I saw the small figure of a tabby kitten the other day on the other side of the village, but for now I am not aware of an imminent population explosion.

There are of course other needy feral cats and other needy animals generally. Here’s a plug for a local animal sanctuary Miño Valley Animal Sanctuary http://minovalleyfarmsanctuary.org/en/ which makes our small feline endeavour look like – well, a small feline endeavour! They’re amazing people, caring for farm animals who would normally be slaughtered for some reason, be it old age and perceived uselessness or being born the ‘wrong’ sex. They have horses, and donkeys, sheep and goats, hedgehogs and chickens, and all sorts of animals. Even cats.
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Speaking of cats, we are increasingly concerned about a colony of feral cats who live on a busy road in the centre of Monforte de Lemos. We noticed them recently when we were having a drink and a tapas on a terrace, as a skinny, very pregnant female came and sat near our table asking for scraps. It turns out there are ‘many’ according to the barman, and they live on a vacant building site behind that bar. So, we’ve started feeding them. 

We entertained the idea of trapping them all and bringing them to the village but had to rethink that idea. As a friend said to me, their home may not be ideal, but it's their home. The village would not be their home. How would we keep them from trying to get back to town? How would we make sure they stayed together? We don’t have a handy place to lock in 10 or so feral cats for two weeks until they become accustomed to a new location. So, for now, we are feeding them in situ. 

​There are obviously others in town who feed the feral cats. A few blocks away we saw this recently which was a relief, but the colony above – near the ancient Colegio - seem perpetually thin and we see them darting in and out of parked cars on that busy road. 

​I’m thinking of starting a new project called “Los Amigos de los Gatos de la Calle” … but will need local help. I’ll update you next time.
 
*Finally, we all of course live in fear of further resurgences - or ‘rebrotes’ - of Covid 19. Use machine translations at your peril! 

It has been dawning on us lately that we have neutered everyone! We have a largely stable colony of mature cats – mostly males – who are all neutered. And we have helped our neighbours neuter their barn-full as well. Of course, there is the odd incursion, more on that below.
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Further afield in town the other day, I looked for Massy, the elderly ginger female who we helped some months ago, and was pleased to see her lying in the sun, seemingly quite content. I wanted to give her the flea treatment that I have in my glove box (doesn’t everyone drive around with spot-on in the glove box?) and gave her a cuddle and applied that. She seemed fine, purred loudly, and her fur is still soft. She still has the pink diamante collar we gave her, looking rather less pink.  Here she is:

Back in the village, we had been worried about Bandido who we hadn’t seen for a couple of months, but he turned up earlier this week so that was a relief. But we are still worried about Ronnie who arrived recently with what looks like gingivitis. This is sometimes a sign that one of the killer viruses has taken hold, so that is concerning. I gave him antibiotics for a couple of days and since then we haven’t seen him, so can only hope he is fine and eating elsewhere. There is nothing else we can do. Ronnie is very feral so if he gets very ill, I suspect he’ll keep away from us.

2CC is trying to join the musketeers but they are having none of it and there are skirmishes and howl-oriented face-offs between him and Husky quite often in the courtyard. I guess they are still figuring out the pecking order, but for now 2CC gets his meals in his own hut, away from the others.

In addition to the stable 8-12 feral cats we feed, there are a couple of unneutered males who drop in from time to time, and again it is Husky who takes on the role of “guardian of the Butterfly Cat Project” (he’s keenly aware of the relationship between supply of cat food and demand for cat food!) and tries to turf them out. We watched with amusement an altercation – one that did not come to blows or even physical contact - the other day in the finca where a horse is kept. Husky and this unknown white and tabby tom were within millimetres of each other’s faces, backs arched and tails fluffed up, ready for action.  

She (the Galician mountain horse – see picture below) was munching away seemingly oblivious to the drama a few meters from her, and I was thinking how good it would be if she broke up the flight. After all she’s quite large, presumably they’d run if she approached. As if she had read my mind, she sauntered over to them and put her nose right between them, with the desired effect. They scarpered. Thanks Loretta. The carrots are on their way!
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Speaking of the horse, she is a major curiosity to the London 4. They have never seen anything like her. Is she a large cat, a placid long-legged dog? What on earth is she, and how does she get by eating grass?

​I leave you with Feeder of the Month of December 2019 – my sister Anna. Anna and Jason have become the latest sponsors of the Butterfly Cat. Many thanks both! 

They were visiting from Australia where, dear reader as you will know,  there are catastrophic fires in the south east  which have been burning for months. A recent report from the EU https://www.eea.europa.eu/ predicts longer droughts and longer summers in Spain, and at the same time an increase in ‘heavy precipitation events’ in areas such as Galicia – which I think we saw a sign of in November/December. I guess the problem with too much rain at any one time is soil erosion and that you can’t capture it all. However, I think the dams are full ready for our own fire season.  I wish I could send some heavy precipitation over to south eastern Australia. 

Just a quick update this month. We have finally taken Ronnie (named after Ron from Harry Potter as he’s ginger) to the vet for neutering. I trapped him on Thursday night, and he had the op on Friday. I haven’t seen him since he raced off out of the cage on Saturday morning, but this is not unusual. He is very feral and the whole experience will have been frightening so I imagine he’ll give Fort Feral a wide berth for a while. We’re hoping he can join the musketeers once his hormones settle down and he smells less threatening. The vet found he had ‘Thelazia callipaeda’ (eye worms) and treated those as well. This is a horrible, painful disease, from a nematode carried by fruit flies, and if untreated can lead to blindness. Here’s a pic from a while ago of Ronnie.

We also took one of the many black feral cats from the other side of the village. The neighbour had brought her around having trapped her and I was assured she was the female who had given birth about 6 weeks ago. Ahem!!!! I dutifully took her to the clinic the next day only to discover she most certainly was not that cat, as during surgery the vet could not find her uterus. Poor little cat. She’d already been neutered. She’s now back home with her family and hopefully is not too traumatised.

This demonstrates the importance of ear tipping (snipping off the very tip of the ear to show the cat is neutered). The vet has now done this and the hunt continues for the mother of the kitten ...

Finally, thanks to Jane and Trevor for looking after Fort Feral and its inhabitants (and the rest of the menagerie) while we were away. You were right about Ronnie! He needed to be top of the list.

Then there is 2CC (that’s Chubby Chops II) who we think - by the chops - is Chubby Chops’ son. He is quite a character. He’s young and could be described as cocky, and appears to have decided that he’d quite like to join the gang. ‘The gang’ would be those regulars, pets and ferals, who hang around the courtyard, and 2CC’s problem is that they are not quite so keen!! They may be happier with the prospect once he’s neutered so we’ll need to schedule that in. More on neutering males later. In the meantime here is 2CC taking up a tactical position near the cat door in the gate, close to where we feed him (away from the others!).

To cut a long story short, Masi had terrible fleas (and that was causing the dermatitis on her back as she tried to scratch it), she has a lump on her side that is breast cancer, she has a misaligned jaw from an accident, she had gingivitis and she had worms in her eyes (thelazia). All this at the age of 15! Blimey!! The thelazia, gingivitis and dermatitis were all treatable and we started her on antibiotics. We kept her for around 10 days treating her and brushing her. She really is a gorgeous girl and very affectionate. In the end we took her home and we have shown her owners the flea treatment she needs monthly to avoid the dermatitis happening again. Now we see her in the village occasionally and she is so much better!  And she has a new collar:

It was so lovely to have been able to have such a visible impact on a cat. 

That experience was followed by a far sadder one in the form of Zorro, one of the musketeers. He died about three weeks ago after losing a huge amount of weight due to either feline FEV or FELV or both. We trapped him and took him to the vet twice but there was nothing to be done but palliative care. The other musketeers helped, Clem and Husky grooming Zorro as we nursed him, to the extent that you can nurse a feral cat. We all miss him hugely, and this event has underlined the importance of neutering males, as these untreatable viruses are passed on by fighting. Yes, males do become more social and less aggressive when they’re neutered - that’s a good thing! Zorro was neutered but it may have been too late in his life, or he was bitten more recently by another male who was highly likely to be unneutered.

RIP Zorro the Magnificent, 10 August 2019.

A mystery has been playing out on the gravel in the courtyard. Husky (aka Porthos of the Musketeers) has been rolling around on his back on the gravel for months. Not continuously you understand - he takes breaks.

He moves from side to side grooming his belly with his tongue, back legs akimbo, and appears to be multi-tasking by relieving an itchy patch on his back at the same time as doing his frontal ablutions.

The itchy patch is (or was) a nasty looking sore about 8 cms by 8 cms wide (since Brexit I have gone completely metric) on his middle back, and the fur around it has been falling away. You see him trying to reach around and lick it but it is in a very hard to lick place, so (we surmise) he rolls around on the gravel. 

I have taken photos of the sore and asked vets about it. One said it looked like an abscess and I should give him antibiotics. Another (Ellie from London) said hmmm, could be lick dermatitis or it could be an abrasion.

I will spare you the photos. Here is one of Husky looking normal.

Abrasion I thought ... that’s interesting ... what could cause that and why isn’t it healing? Is it an abrasion that keeps happening perchance?

​A lightbulb moment occurred. Oh dear. The long chest-like plastic box in which the Musketeers sleep ‘all a huddle’, which is located in our outside boiler room, has a cat sized hole at both ends. I say cat-sized but perhaps not Husky-sized! When I cut these holes with a heated up knife years ago none of the feral cats was anything approaching obese.

Funnily enough, I put a video on facebook a few months ago showing Husky squeezing himself in to his boudoir. See bottom of the page.

We think Husky is so fat and his gut so large that he has been literally scraping off the skin on his back to get in and out of his bed! This was a horrible moment of realisation followed by a quick trip across courtyard with knife and lighter.

I made the holes bigger and since then the nasty sore has been drying up very nicely.

The second point of this blog is to muse on why on earth Husky and his fellow Musketeers are so fat.

Husky is the biggest, but Clem Fandango is very round, and while Zorro carries his weight well he is certainly a big guy.

They are fatter than our pet cats from London and I think therein lies the clue. We have two different kinds of cat food in our house: the posh stuff for the London 4, and the cheaper stuff for the ferals. I suspect the cheaper stuff is hugely calorific while the posh stuff is more nutritious and less calorific. And because of Zita’s own tendency to stack it on, we buy grain-free dry food.

When I say ‘cheaper stuff’ I don’t mean cheapest you can get. We did buy that a couple of times and the ferals wouldn’t eat it!

Anyway, I hear you cry ‘feed the feral fatties less (cheaper but not dirt cheap) food’!

Difficult. If we feed them less they hang around the door more, upsetting our Scruffy, who the avid reader of this blog (hello again!!) will know is somewhat territorial, likes a bit of fisticuffs and has a ripped ear to prove it.

Okay well let them fight I hear you (avid reader) shout, let Scruffy off the leash so to speak. Well, that is to be avoided because while the London 4 are vaccinated against the usual things they are not vaccinated against feline HIV and the ferals are likely to be carrying that, a very nasty virus spread by bodily fluids, and therefore fighting.

Scratch the surface and there it is again, the tale of inequalities in the co existence of these two groups. The London 4 with their posh vaccinations and grain-free vet-approved nutrition, and the poor old ferals with their nasty diseases and their high calorie cheap (but not dirt cheap) kibble. Here are Jessie and Bette Davis are tucking in below.

I should point out the the fat feral cat phenomenon is rare - they are usually very skinny and need people to be kind to them, by which I mean feed them and neuter them!

​The latest in a string of medical challenges has been Husky’s very bad cat flu. He was off his food for days and was finding breathing difficult with all the phlegm. The thing with him is, of all the ferals he is one of the most feral, so we knew it would be hard to trap him if that was needed. The vet said to get some antibiotics into his food, which we tried on numerous occasions, but he wasn’t eating at all. He would follow the others to the bowls as if he was going to, and then not be able to once he was at a bowl. Instead he would sneeze and spray phlegm everywhere. Not good! For him or the others.

At that point we had just treated Clem Fandango for cat flu with antibiotics over three days, successfully. He had still been eating so that had worked a treat.

Some of you may be wondering why on earth we would give antibiotics for a virus, and you are right to question it. I did as well, and the vet told me that once the symptoms were so bad their eyes were streaming, there was very likely to be a secondary bacterial infection. So with Clem we got the antibiotics into him and three days later he was fully recuperated - as far as we could tell - which seemed to support the secondary bacterial infection theory.

Anyway, Husky, normally an enthusiastic eater and a portly figure,  was not eating. What to do? Unless he started improving - or eating - we would have to trap him to get him to the vet. Here's Husky as a reminder:

In our favour was the fact that he was clearly very ill and lacked his usual sprightly energy, but our first attempts to corner him in one of the food stations, the idea being to pounce on him with a blanket, were met with a vigorous dash for freedom, and some suspicious looks from a thicket to which he had retreated. This was no good at all, we thought. He was using the very low reserves he had to escape from us!

Attempt 2 was with an actual trap, with sardines as bait. Nil points for us, except that we could have caught any other ferals as they milled around it. And they all enjoyed some unexpected sardines. Husky was by now giving us a very wide berth, snuffling and wheezing in the undergrowth.

Attempt 3 was the most ridiculous and we exerted a lot of our own energy, each of us with a large blanket trying to corner him on open ground. I did try a rugby-style dive in his direction at one point, a spectacular failure but one which may have amused our neighbours.

At night he was still sleeping in the long, chest-like plastic box filled with cushions in our boiler room, with Zorro and Clem. We knew this from wildlife camera footage, so Attempt 4 was to first of all block one of the two entrances to the box and then wait for him to go to bed. I would then sneak  into the boiler room with the crush cage, line the cage up with the entrance to the box and hey presto, he would run into it, wouldn’t he? I had a blanket over the cage so it would appear an attractively safe dark space. Everything in place, Husky inside wheezing, I started banging the side of the plastic box. Nothing. I opened the lid of the box and there he was looking at me, but not jumping out which he would have had he been fit. Hmmm I thought.  I reached for a broom, put it in the box behind him, closed the lid so just the handle of the broom was visible, and starting nudging him towards the cage, one hand on the broom while holding the cage in place with the other hand. I felt his weight as he shuffled into the cage! I dropped the portcullis door and we had him! 

Spanish business hours (which extend to 8 pm) meant that the vet could see him straight away. The vet was wonderful as he always is, turning Husky this way and that in the crush cage to examine him, and then injecting some antibiotics through the cage. He said he’d keep him in for the night, and texted me in the morning to say the cat was recovering very well if his aggression was anything to go by. 

This is him being released later that day: 

After that, he was on daily antibiotics until the snuffling stopped. Just lately he has developed a nasty sore on his back, so he is on antibiotics again, but that’s another story. The cold has gone.

At the end of November we lost Chubby Chops. We found him dead one morning in the rain in one of the fincas. He had been hit by a car we think. There was no blood, but my vet friend in London looked at some photos and said that his face showed a major impact, so that is all we can think it was, and he had managed to get himself up the hill from the road, to where he felt safe. He had had many ups and downs with his health (see last blog) and had recently recovered well from other injuries. He was a gentle soul and had almost become the fourth musketeer. It was always a delight to see him scampering along with his funny bent tail in the air when I crossed the stile with food. We were very sad to lose him. RIP Mr CC.

​So there you have it. A year, our first being here virtually full time, with its triumphs and its sadnesses.

Wishing you all the very best in 2019 with your own four-legged creatures. We love them and we lose them, but we still go on loving them. 

I’ll leave you with a photo from our new kitchen of Calypso and Ronny waiting for their breakfasts.

Happy new year!

​Sorry to have been lax with the blog. Life is as ever hectic and I thought a week ago there was really not much to report!

Then Chubby Chops arrived yesterday after an absence of many months. I had seen him from time to time in other parts of the village, but fleetingly, and I am afraid he is a victim of the arrival of the London 4 in January. CC had been a constant presence around the house until that. He therefore had found a new neighbourhood and I thought, well that’s okay. He seemed alright.

He has always been ‘full of face’, but yesterday he arrived limping badly and with a huge abscess on the side of his head which must be very painful.

I’ve just realised I didn’t write a blog in July and if I had, I would have told you about the perils of tinned cat food in summer. I went to Fort Feral to dish out some of that late in July I think it was, and was swarmed by some wasps, one of whom stung me on the leg. They were desperate to get into the tin and I had to make a hasty exit. Hence, the end of tinned cat food in the summer. Wasps are a worry here as there have been a few deaths – yes deaths – from the Asian Hornet (vespa velutina) which is apparently moving in to the area, and is aggressive towards humans – not to mention bees. The deaths were due to allergies and I think the sheer number of stings made treatment difficult. Anyway, these were normal smaller hornets, and it appears I am not allergic. So quite a useful experience really!

​It has been fiesta season here in Galicia, and Spain, and that means the building work has ground to  virtual standstill as people go away to the beach, or hang out at the pool in the stiflingly hot weather. 

I would have been doing either or both of these but there was an incident involving a very sharp vegetable peeler, a sweet potato, and my left thumb, some weeks ago, which left me unable to do many things, including swim! Thumbs turn out to be very useful indeed and the trapping of cats I was planning, was also a casualty as those traps are fiddly! And I guess perhaps not the cleanest items for a recovering thumb to be handling.

As well as this inconvenience, there has been a mystery of the three musketeers disappearing – that is Zorro, Clem Fandango, and Huskie*.
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They disappeared for around 4 days quite suddenly, and in unison. They returned pretty much all together, and we put it down to nearby fiesta-related barbecue action – far superior to the dry cat food they’ve been getting. You could put this migration down to the wasp sting in fact! Here is Clem pressing his nose up against the glass one morning, while Zorro looks on, back to normal.

Anyway they are back, and all okay. However, some clear factions have been forming with the cats.
There are now four groups:

• The London Homees – dominant in and around the house (led by Scruffy, who is the King)
• The three musketeers* – dominant around Fort Feral (led by Huskie I would say), tolerated by Scruffy - just!
• Calypso and Ronny – peripheral and get what they can (not led by anyone)
• Jessie and Bette Davis – even more peripheral (and may not be speaking even to each other!)

Jessie and Bette Davis used to be the permanent fixtures around the house, but the arrival of the London Homees has upset that and weirdly, Scruffy and Zaldi (our two neutered males) seem to dislike them intensely. Why would they tolerate the gang of neutered males and detest the neutered females? Bette and Jessie don’t seem to be welcome at Fort Feral either. The result is that neither Bette nor Jessie get much of a look in food-wise, so we are resorting to other tactics. Here is Bette Davis waiting in one of the abandoned houses where we’ve started feeding her. She had just been snoozing in an old basket.

And here is Jessie being fed down the lane, towards the woods. She won’t even come near me now!

We may have to move one of the feeding stations to somewhere completely different to handle the factions.
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Speaking of feeding, this appears to be feeding time in Monforte de Lemos – someone needs to start trap-neuter-returning!

​*Zorro Is Porthos: a dandy, fond of fashionable clothes and keen to make a fortune for himself. The least cerebral of the quartet, he compensates with his homeric strength of body and character.
Huskie is Athos: Comte de la Fère: he has never recovered from his marriage to Milady and seeks solace in wine. Milady may well be Calypso.
Clem is D’Artagnan: Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnan: a young, foolhardy, brave and clever man seeking his fortune.

A sultry summer has arrived and the feral cats disappear during the day, to emerge around 7 pm in the big courtyard, lying about on the gravel. There seems to be a peaceful but finely balanced Mexican stand-off in which Scruffy (clearly the King of the Courtyard) luxuriates on his back giving himself a good scratch on the gravel, between house and ferals, demonstrating that he is indeed King and should a feral get too close to the house they will get a good thwack.

Waiting at an acceptable distance are usually three neutered boys: Husky, Clem Fandango and Zorro. Up at Fort Feral there are usually some others, Calypso (the butterfly cat) and Bandido, and sometimes Bette Davis and Jessie. Scruffy occasionally makes an appearance to observe proceedings from a nearby wall, but happily follows me back to the house on my return journey.
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Husky, shown below, has a bit of a complex about sharing and as the food goes down into each of the three feeding stations, he darts from one to the other as if to say ‘It’s all mine! Stop eating it!’ which is pretty futile on his part as the others take advantage of his mania and get stuck in.

​It’s funny how behaviour develops. When I emerge from the kitchen door with their food they all gallop off ahead of me, knowing I am destined for Fort Feral and two in particular, the two friendliest – Clem and Zorro – weave in and out of my legs, leapfrogging each other, round and round and I have to take care not to fall over! I end up doing an impression of John Wayne so that they can indeed run around my legs. What is this about? Sheer enthusiasm? A ploy to trip me up so I spill the food and they get to eat it more quickly? If one of the builders is to be believed it is to trip me up so I break my neck, perish in the finca and provide a food source until someone notices I’ve disappeared!

​For your viewing delight I have included a photo of what I think must be ‘excrement of fox’. It is not the first time such a specimen has appeared in a food bowl at Fort Feral, and again it is pretty strange behaviour! Okay, so maybe there wasn’t any food left for him or her, but it does seem a bit mean – albeit skilful - to have a dump in a food bowl in protest. Churlish I would say!

Mizuki is at home at the moment, seemingly quite happy (as long as she gets cold milk twice a day). Apparently ‘everyone knows her’ now in the town down the road, and her absences from home - which have ranged from 4 days to 8 weeks – are considered impressive but foolhardy. Some people from the town wandering by yesterday, stopped for a chat and commented, ‘Well they do say cats have seven lives’. I told them they have two additional ones in English speaking countries. I had a look at this online and it appears that there are no claims beyond 9, but the number of lives is 6 in Arabic-speaking countries, and 7 in Spanish-speaking countries. 

I will leave you with Clem and Husky on another handy waiting surface ... out of Scruffy's reach.