We will have to set up better shelters one day, and this will be prompted by the impending renovation of the abandoned house where at least one cat has slept - or spent some time - once. Here it is below. 'Needs work'.
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I wrote yesterday that I would check to see if the cats had been using the new cosy(ish) plastic boxes in the abandoned house. Well, I went over the courtyard armed with my wad of sticky tape, wrestled with the broken door, and am pleased to say I have evidence that at least, er one cat, has used one of the boxes at least once! And said cat is light coloured. This is brilliant and allows me to say I told you so Adam!
We will have to set up better shelters one day, and this will be prompted by the impending renovation of the abandoned house where at least one cat has slept - or spent some time - once. Here it is below. 'Needs work'.
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The reason for the lapse in communications is that we've been in London, and Canada in Adam's case. I am now here for a very short spell before Xmas, to talk to some builders and to check on the cats, and see how the village is. The truth is I can't keep away! Even in winter. I drove from La Coruña airport last night. Usually uneventful and around an hour and a half. Last night though, the fog (la niebla) was terrible most of the way. This was especially true on the brand new highway from Lugo (Lugo's around 50 kms north of here) to Monforte de Lemos. The fog got really bad around Sarria. I was able to do around 100 kph until there was what appeared to be a wall of white and I had to slow down suddenly, eyeing a car in the rear view mirror to ensure it was slowing down equally quickly. Soon after, feeling my way along with only a few metres visibility in front, there was an overtaking lane and I gratefully moved into the right. The car behind followed suit and I realised the driver was probably as freaked out as I was, and he or she wanted someone else in front thank you very much! It was quite scary. Anyway, I did make it and 24 hours later am sitting with the pellet stove making everything very cosy in the barn conversion. It's getting down to about 3 or 4 degrees at night at the moment. That's bad enough but we can get below zero here and there is often 'mucha niebla' in the morning. I set up these large plastic boxes last time I was here, in an abandoned house nearby (well, actually, it's our next building project!). I bought some warm igloo type things and put them inside. Tomorrow I will get some sticky tape, wad it into a ball, and see if I can detect fur! I really hope they're using them as I reckon they could get quite snuggly in there in a heap. They are certainly somewhere in the morning as I didn't see them until late. So, who have I seen cat-wise? The first visitor this morning was Frank Sinatra. Then I saw Jessica, then TortiMiniMe, then her brother, and finally Jessica's sister the tail-less cat and the one I call La Tigre who is the only female who comes around who is not yet neutered. No sign yet of (either) butterfly cat, or Tottipizza. Jessica and her son were catching the last few rays on the wall this afternoon, looking pretty content - and robust, which in early winter is an encouraging sign. Sorry about the photo, taken with my phone this time. All had canned food, and I will add some brewers' yeast to the next few meals as I have read it helps keep the fleas under control see link here . Getting flea treatment onto necks is not an option!
I was thinking that although we can't get physically close to these cats, we do have relationships with them. They certainly know us, our voices, and they seem to trust us. When I approached Jessica this afternoon for the photo above she didn't move at all and I was a metre from her. When we are here they (or the colony at this end of the village) work it out pretty quickly and tend to be here too, or at least pass through frequently. Our neighbour Manolo said this evening he suspected we were here, as there had been fewer diners at his macaroni restaurant. Watching the news just now, there was a really touching conversation between a child and his father following the attacks in Paris - see here The father said something along the lines of 'they have guns but we have flowers, and the flowers and the candles will protect us'. It is a time of terrible world events for which solutions seem hard to find.
it is so good to be able to fix some suffering on a very micro non-human level. Tortipizza was anaesthetised and examined yesterday. It turns out she had some rotten teeth and these have been extracted. This is actually really good news as (a) her ability to eat should improve a lot as the pain of these teeth and gums subsides and (b) it suggests she may not necessarily have the nasty cat viruses we feared. If the vet had found inflammation and ulcers, but no obvious tooth problem, this would have indicated she could have FELV or FIV. Neither is treatable. We had a feeling it was something 'physical' like this, as apart from the mouth problem she seemed in quite good shape, unlike Silver Shadow a few years ago who had a mouth problem but was also in very bad shape physically, seeming to be quite weak and bedraggled, and having lost weight. So this morning we let Tortipizza go, making sure she had eaten some soft food, and as always happens when you release a feral cat, she went off like a shot from the cage as soon as I raised the door. As we are now back in London we can only hope she is getting some macaroni for dinner! The neighbours will try to ensure she does. Isn't it great that some things can be easily fixed? A very satisfying round of cat business. Success on a few fronts. We took the little butterfly cat and her sister, TortiMiniMe, to be neutered yesterday and all went well. When we released them this morning (their mum Jessica was waiting outside the house at 6 am) they shot off, but both turned up later for food, much to our delight, and they look really well, and not as if they have just had the weirdest 36 hours of their short lives! There's a great feeling of satisfaction with this. They will likely live longer and happier lives, only needing to worry about getting food for themselves - in addition to not producing any kittens. The other thing that has surprised us is that we did finally manage to catch Tortipizza who has the mouth problem. She is currently sitting quietly in a cage in our darkened bathroom awaiting her appointment tomorrow morning with the vet, who will sedate her and examine her mouth. She was making the most horrible yowling noises earlier, to the point where we were feeling terrible that she was so distressed. But it is the right thing to do, and we're hopeful her problem is something surgery can fix, and she can live a much longer life and never have to be in a cage again. If we could communicate I think she'd agree on that point. We face constant dilemmas about doing this stuff. We question ourselves all the time, and I have to remind myself that I did not go looking for a Spanish village with feral cats. I imagined using binoculars to watch buzzards and seeing the odd hedgehog, boar or deer (all this happens!). I did not for a minute consider we'd be running some kind of cat hospital, and I really wish there weren't any feral cats here, or that there were perhaps 5 neutered and healthy adults who were warm and dry and well-fed! I share these anxieties with the neighbours as well, but more about that later. The reality is that there are many feral cats here, and we have some opportunity to help (and maybe reach that goal of there being a few healthy adults) so I think we must. But intervening comes with much soul searching. We are only here for a few more days, and want to accomplish a lot with the cats. First we want to take two of the young females to the vet to be sterilised, as well as finally getting Tortipizza checked out. Plus we want to set up some warm places for the cats to sleep in the abandoned houses nearby. The two young females are around 5 months old and should be spayed soon (Butterfly Cat here is one). As we are not going to be around to organise this until probably the new year, they would then be 7 months old and likely to be pregnant. I have been reading up on the various feral cat advice sites (there are loads and seem to be mainly from the US) and they agree that 5 months is not too young, some even say spaying can be done at 4 months or younger. Of course this is different to the accepted wisdom about domestic cats where the advice is usually to spay at 6 months. But that situation is where you may have control over the cat, or the cat might have the protection of a home or humans. In the case of ferals they have no protection at all. For more on this see www.feralcats.com/feral-kittens So we stopped off to talk to the local vet today and agreed to bring in these two this week. We will also speak with him about Tortipizza. She can't eat dry food as she has a problem with her mouth. She eats the tinned food that we give her and the macaroni that the neighbours provide, if she can get to it before the others. So we really need to find out if there is something going on with her teeth or jaw that surgery could fix. I tried several times to catch her last time we were here but she is very wary of the traps (having had that experience once around 5 years ago when she was neutered!). She has a long memory that one, and is a smart cookie. If only we could explain that we want to help her! I am hoping a 'delicious' paste treat, called 'Gimpet' (sounds and smells disgusting) I have brought with me will do the trick to get her into a trap. Finally, we want to set up two plastic boxes I bought, as houses for the winter. I bought some large polystyrene boxes a few years ago which were purpose built for feral cats, with cat flap size doors and two chambers inside. We put them on bricks so they are off the floor, in one of the abandoned houses. We have no idea if they have been used. They are still there and if you lift the lid there appear to be signs of activity, grit and bits of leaf but no obvious fur. Who knows? I read today that cats whose ears are turned over on the tips could have had frostbite. We have a few of these here, the tail-less cat for example. I thought it was genetic but perhaps it was frostbite! This underlines the importance of warm shelters during the winter. The plan for the new plastic boxes, which are 'blanket box' size, is to cut catflap shape holes in either end and line with a few tight fitting layers of cardboard. We're hoping this will give some insulation. I am sure they curl up in a big heap for warmth, and quite a few cats will fit in these. Adam is not convinced they'll use them, and I hope to prove him wrong! Eventually I would like to build a proper outside shelter based on a shed design, but we haven't managed that yet. Well, here we are again in early November. It's a special time of year where you get gloriously warm days, but some mornings are misty, like this morning. It has something to do with San Martin and San Miguel apparently! See here
Cats-wise, the usual suspects have been around and some newcomers as well. This handsome boy could be responsible for some kittens methinks! Here are some pics, and we will write more later. This is a story I've been meaning to tell but it is a sad one.
There was a cat here who we called Silver Shadow. He was a big guy with a white chest and the rest of him was silvery tabby. According to our neighbours he had 'gone feral' many years ago and was actually from a local town and had once upon a time been a pet. Perhaps he had moved up the hill to where the wild females were, who knows. We didn't see him much. We did neuter him in 2010 when my vet friend was here - and she liked him so much she wanted to take him home, but like most of the males here he was quite nomadic and we would only see him occasionally as he dropped in to the 'feeding station' under the granary for some food. You couldn't tell he had been a pet as he gave us a wide berth like the others. Anyway, one winter we were here and it was very cold. We had just arrived and were bringing things in from the car when we heard a plaintive crying and Silver Shadow came towards us looking bedraggled. He seemed to be in quite a state. He'd lost weight and his normally brilliant white chest was dirty. And he was really looking for help - he came right to us and wanted to come in the house. This was all a bit of a shock as he had never behaved like this, and he had a certain smell about him. We figured he must have an ear infection or something like that. Over the next week we took him to the vet, and he stayed inside the house with us. He was acting like a pet cat. He let us clean him up, and he loved sitting on our laps, and wove himself round our legs when we opened the fridge door! The vet said he had some kind of mouth infection and gave him antibiotics, but we also had him tested for the nasty cat viruses. To our great dismay it turned out he had both FELV and Feline HIV. The vet said whilst he was carrying these they might not be the reason for the active infection. But on the other hand, one or both of the viruses could be taking hold, with the mouth infection being part of process. If this was the case, he would die. The problem was, we were leaving. I wondered if I could extend my trip to take care of him and I checked all the work stuff I had to do. Adam did the same and we didn't think we could. I wish we had changed our minds. The day we had to drive away leaving him outside broke my heart. I just hoped beyond anything that the long acting antibiotics would sort him out and he'd be back to his old self. I had spoken to the neighbours and explained that because of his mouth he couldn't eat dry food, and I left some tins of wet food. I also asked them to get in touch with his previous owners and let them know he was ill, and needed looking after even if just for the short term. I knew that wouldn't be the most appealing prospect for some people who probably hadn't seen him for years, but I was desperate. We phoned a few days later to find out how he was and our neighbour said he was running around the village. I didn't know whether to believe her but I chose to, and felt relieved. When we returned a couple of months later we learned the truth. She had found him under our granary. To me it seemed he had been waiting for us to come back. He was very ill and she scooped him up and took him to her brother in law's house in the village. She didn't want a fox to kill him in his weakened state. Her brother in law Gerardo let him die under his granary, giving him water and food. That is the very sad side to these cats, and the very hard part of not being here all the time. We try to help but sometimes our limitations make it all very painful. Here's to you Silver Shadow. You were a lovely cat, and we wish we'd done more. This is one of the brothers of Jessica and the tail-less cat. He is one of the cats we would like some help naming (see Name that cat! here ). He came around for some food the other day and I managed to get some nice shots of him, looking extremely handsome and healthy... but what shall we call him? Puma? Panthera? Don Juan?
That bump on the left hand bough of the old dead walnut tree appeared to be the ginger male from the other day. But we realised he was actually asleep, curled up with his back legs supporting his tail in an impossible looking yoga asana, and balanced on very little. Of course we woke him up with our stalking around the tree taking photographs... and he looks quite grumpy in the last one. Who can blame him?
There's lots of wildlife here, not just the cats. This area has been depopulating for years, beginning with an exodus in the late 19th and early 20th century. This apparently had something to do with the small size of the minifundios (smallholdings), and their inability to support large families. The minifundio was the result of a system of inheritance that distributed land plots in a closed rural system to a growing population by requiring that equal shares be bequeathed to every descendant. The land had become subdivided so much that most of the plots were too small to support a family or to be economically viable. You can read more here . Many Galicians went to Central and South America, abandoning their smallholdings in the process. The effect of this has been that in any village in Galicia you might find properties whose ownership is unknown. This is in addition to those whose ownership is known but for whatever reason have not been maintained and are falling into ruin in the case of houses, or are completely overgrown in the case of fields, called fincas here. On one hand this is slightly disturbing but on the other, it is nice to see nature reclaiming some space. There is a finca very near us which is a jungle of ferns and grasses and I think there are some trees in there too. It's a shame for the trees as they start to disappear under the jungle and get strangled by rampant ivy, but it is a paradise for animals and insects. I was kept awake a couple of months ago because of a dog barking. It turned out it was barking at a wild boar which was in that finca. I couldn't really blame the dog, but shout as I might at 4 am, that boar was going nowhere. It was snuffling around merrily without a care in the world. I couldn't see it but I could hear it. And the dog. |
AuthorAdam and Janey, London and Lugo Archives
October 2021
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