Cat stories

Our first night on the road in Baja we spent the night in Catavina way out in the middle of nowhere. It is an amazing wild place in the middle of a cactus and boulder forest and surprisingly has a really nice hotel with very good restaurant. That, with about seven houses is the extent of it. This hotel also had a colony of about beautiful starving cats and a darling kitten. We thought about kidnapping her, but in the end decided it wasn’t the most intelligent idea and left her to her fate.

When we arrived here I was determined I would not take on any local animals. Casa Boleo came with two part-time wild cats that live outside. When I say “came with” I actually mean they spend a good portion of their time here sleeping in the side yard under the spare company pickup trucks. One is a white cat with blue eyes, and the other is her darling calico kitten which actually has little black hearts scattered on her fur as part of her calico design. My heart couldn’t bear to watch the kitten with kind of a palsy that hungry little animals have nor the plaintive miaowing one night, so off to the store I went the next day for Purina kitten chow. For about 5 nights in a row I fed little Frida Kahlo, her mother Penelope, and one whom we assume is her father, Diego Rivera. Our cat Winnie was plastered to the window much of the time and wouldn’t even move or go to eat when he could be watching her.

Then no little Frida for two days. Penelope came and Diego came, I was sure she had met some evil fate. Last night she and Penelope were back, I have no idea where she was holing up or why she abandoned us. But I swear to you she looks well fed and has grown about 2 inches. I wonder if she has a real owner but I can’t imagine so she is such a wild little thing. I don’t know if I will ever get close enough to pet her, she runs away each time I go out and put down cat food to reappear in two minutes and chow down on it. Today she is gone again, although the place is lousy with workmen, so maybe that’s not surprising.