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*.
​
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.
​
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.
​
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.

The funny thing is, there is another neutered-boy-couple, who eat at Josefa’s house and similarly are each other’s shadows. They are Nigel and Frank Sinatra (or Nigel, comma, and Frank Sinatra as they are not quite singing siblings), so what is going on?

Have we discovered a biological adaptation to being neutered? I wonder if once they lose some of their hormone-derived aggression after the snip, they opt for safety in numbers. The two couples seem not to wander from the village and are always together, even if squabbling. Clemmy and Husky sleep in our outside boiler room in a large plastic chest with cushions. Not bad going in the scheme of things!

Husky and Clem wait outside the kitchen door every morning, and this is my view every day as they lead the way to the comederos at Fort Feral. ​

The rain has not stopped for weeks and weeks here and all over Spain. They say ‘En abril, aguas mil’ (In April, a thousand showers). ​

Patrick and Karen from Scotland were just here and bravely slogged through mud on a few walks around the area, all the time no doubt considering Barbados next spring!  At least the dams are full and the drought must be officially over. 

I guess I could have predicted that this blog would start to include the pet cats, even if the Butterfly Cat charity doesn’t (despite the pets drooling over the cheap out-of-bounds dry food!). The fact is they all interact, and quite positively so far. I think Scruffy may even have a bit of a thing for both Bette Davis and Jessie. He gets quite puffed up and animated when they come around. 

Mizuki (our Bengal) has been gone for 7 weeks now. Someone said they thought they saw her in nearby village but we have followed that up and drawn a blank. Apart from that, no one has responded to our posters which are up all over the countryside, in bus stops and on lampposts. It is hard not knowing what happened to her when she wandered off all those Saturdays ago, and unless she is warm and safe and hunting in a barn somewhere, the possibilities are bleak.

Still the work with the ferals goes on. Here’s Patrick, ‘Pet Feeder of the Month’ getting amongst it in the undergrowth one evening. Thank you!!
​

Sometimes it is better to wait than act hastily, trap and traumatise a cat that might ‘come good’ on his own. If the wound does swell up again though, I will take him in, regardless of him protesting that it’s ‘just a scratch’. 

Apart from the continuous presence of Husky, and twice a week visits of Clem Fandango, Bette Davis and Jessie, there are not many cats around right now, or maybe they are turning up at night to see what’s left in the comederos.

The builders are here every day and Jose Manuel has some feral cats he looks after on his finca. One has just had kittens and he is looking for homes for them. I have been pushing the point about neutering, and printed out the chart below for him today. It’s staggering, and he was suitably impressed. ​I'll let you know what happens.

Hopefully, the rainbow yesterday heralds some good weather and some news of our own small tabby creature. ​

Written 15 February:

Have you ever driven along a long dark highway, and in the rear vision mirror you can see other cars behind you, weaving along the road, their headlights bright as they follow you towards wherever you are going? It’s like that every time I go to feed the feral cats in the evening. I have my headlamp on. It is on a thick piece of elastic around my beanie (Australian for woolly hat). Yep, very attractive! But it means my hands are free to help climb over the wall and also put the food in the bowls, and fight any wolves that appear out of the darkness. That last bit was just to see if you were awake. There are no wolves here anymore, sadly.

Actually, I have always coveted a headlamp, and had an excuse to get one for exactly this purpose, and I am sure some of the many, many readers of this blog are feeling a little stab of envy, go on admit it! You know you want one and I know you can find a reason to secure one. They are very good value, made in China no doubt and cheap as chips.

Anyway, the eyes glow in the light and I can see many, many pairs of headlights following me in an enthusiastic but orderly fashion, on their way, single file, to the feeding stations.

We have changed our approach, so we feed dry food at night instead of canned food. This is because of foxes being spotted on the wildlife camera near the feeding stations and we figure that they’ll be less attracted by dry food than the saucy flavours of gravy laden canned food – which arrive late morning instead of at night. During the day, you never see a fox. They are asleep in the woods. The wolves were probably once sleeping in the same woods, before they were eradicated.

We’ve been here five weeks now, the longest in the ten years we’ve been coming here. Yes, we are really living here. But living here in a strange kind of way. Building work is all around, in fact we are living on a building site in reality. But the builders go off for siesta from 1.30 until 3.30 and as this is the nicest part of the day, if it’s sunny, we are all outside. That is, Adam, me and three of the four London cats – plus all the ferals. Three of the four because Zita is not at all sure about all of this country life quite yet. 

And despite all the worry, the London 3 (at least) and the ferals are all fine together. They are curious about each other, but there is very little aggression, not that we have seen anyway. We are keeping the London lot inside at night, at least for now, and that means blocking the catflap because they really want to get out amongst it, except for Zita.

We let them out in the morning and it would appear that one of them trots over the way to our new (ancient, being renovated) house, in advance of the arrival of the builders, and relieves itself in a strategic position somewhere on the concrete floor. The builders draw my attention to this event every now and then. I say, well it must be a fox. They say no, it’s a cat. I say, must be a feral. They say, it’s only been happening since the London cats have been here. I shrug, they shrug. I think ‘Mizuki!’. And here she is. She is the eldest of our cats, and quite a character. Obviously. 
 

Postscript: I have been delaying posting this blog, because Mizuki has disappeared. This is not unusual. She would be gone for three weeks at a stretch when we lived in London, but we are worried because 'we're not in Kansas anymore Toto!'. Adam thinks he saw her in the village across the way, with the rather handsome Bandido, and we are hoping that was her, but we haven't seen her there again and the weather has been very cold. She may well be hunting mice in a barn full of hay - let's hope so, and that she comes home soon.