No one in this part of the world would ever kill a domestic animal, so their numbers soon got out of control. Mentioning this, the fishermen of Farol would screw their fingers into their temples and roll their eyes in derision as if to say, what will he come up with next? Their version was that the cats had been imported in the old days to clean up the mess left when they degutted fish on the spot before packing them up to be sent away. The story was that Don Alberto, the local landowner, who was also a bit of a historian, claimed that they had always been there, and produced a fanciful theory based on some reference made to them by an early traveller that they had some connection with the sacred cats of Ancient Egypt. You saw little of them in the daytime, but after dark they were everywhere. They were an ugly breed, skinny with long legs and small, pointed heads. There were several hundred of them living in whatever accommodation they could find in the village, and in caves in the hill behind it. It can sleep in the shed and it’ll keep the rats away.’ Farol was full of cats, for which reason it was often called Pueblo de los Gatos – Cat Village. When I went to live in Farol, the Grandmother who owned the house gave me a cat.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |