The weeks go by here in paradise beautifully for all of us except the cats. They absolutely hate Puerto Vallarta.
Cats might have been gods in places like Egypt — even our neighbourhood in Victoria appears to cherish them — but not Mexico. Here they are thought of as nuisances and mainly spotted around mounds of garbage. There are programs about the city to spay and neuter as many felines as possible, but there are hundreds that live on the streets and the island in the centre of the river. In other words we are overrun.
My wife’s two cats are used to being admired as blue-eyed Siamese, with friends offering fishy tidbits upon request. But here there are Siamese everywhere, blue-eyed or not. They are as common as coconuts and that is saying something in a city of palm trees.
So when people come to visit, particularly locals, they tend to put the boot in, as it were, when they spot Pericles and Bertram. This outrages my cat-loving wife, but to a chap like me who has been terrorized by the frightful creatures, there is a gentle justice to the whole scenario.
Because of these wretched animals, sympathetic friends send me facts concerning cats in general and may I say they very much, the facts that is, lend themselves to my point: that dogs are good, cats are bad.
Here is what I have learned.
The Chinese, whom I greatly admire, eat more than four million cats every year. They are considered a delicacy.
Cats allegedly sleep for 70 per cent of their lives. Our cats only awake to eat, befoul the air and to disturb my day.
The CIA spent tens of millions of dollars trying to teach cats to spy in the 1960s. Their first and only graduate was run over by a car shortly after the ceremony.
In ancient Egypt citizens would shave off their eyebrows in mourning for their cats. It is now a failed society. Is there a correlation? Also killing a cat, by mistake or not, brought the immediate death penalty. It is still a mad country.
Should you be unlucky enough to be pregnant and have to clean your cat’s biffy, you might come down with something called toxoplasmosis, which can lead to mental problems, epilepsy and cerebral palsy in your own children. Cats are filthy creatures.
Cats have had fingers pointed at them for causing the extinction of many species.
Another good reason to like chocolate is that cats get very sick from eating it and can possibly die. “Here, Pericles and Bertram….”
In our case, the cats are addicted to tuna and refuse to eat anything else. And not just any tuna, the blue tuna that is flown in to Victoria nightly and must be bought the next morning from the market run by that highwayman, Mr. Johnston.
I could go on and on about our cats and their non-beneficial effect on the world in general.
Here in Puerto Vallarta the garbage cats leave us alone but do not like our two felines. They take exception to them lying in the window seat, languorously stretching and calling for food.
Whenever they get the chance, they will expectorate onto Bertram and Pericles as they pass the open window.
The gruesome twosome are naturally outraged by this behaviour and meow furiously at their Mexican third cousins, but not understanding their northern accents, the cousins take no notice and simply spit more at them.
I have occasionally pressed my wife to let our two explore the neighbourhood, but not being stupid, our cats press themselves against the back wall in terror. They tried going out last year but came face to face with the Mexican professional cats, who would brook no upper-class nonsense from them.
The upshot was that Pericles and Bertram barely made it home alive after being thoroughly mauled, and were so upset that my wife Kitty briefly considered calling a cat psychologist. In Victoria there are several of these bearded types who are always licking themselves, and they cost a fortune. Mexico being a forward-thinking country shot several last year for being a blight. Viva Mexico.
On our annual visit of Puerto Vallarta I love to walk the hills for it thrills me that both my lungs and my legs have been renewed. Last week I cantered up the Sierra Madre (Occidental) mountain range or at least the foothills of it, and got a view of the Pacific that few will see.
I was enjoying myself until I met a few villagers moving quickly down the hill as I went up. I enquired in my horrendous Spanish “Why the hurry?” I managed to make out the word “panther” and shot down the hill, followed by the startled group. At the bottom I gulped two margaritas at the first cantina.
Panther. Now there is a cat.
Copyright Christopher Dalton 2016.
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