Spanish Cats Only Have Seven Lives
Graham, well now he’s Graham, strolled into our lives when he breached the defences of our garden three or four months ago. Maybe it was before then, maybe after; one never remembers when these things happen exactly, because they only become interesting in the light of what happens after. We’ve had a lot of cats since we came to Spain. One, Mary, came with me riding down in an MGB GT. She screamed all the way from Huntingdon to Dover but finally accepted there was no escape and watched France pass by with her paws on the dashboard. She died of heart failure. So far she’s our only cat that has lived out her natural span. Most of the rest have been slaughtered by cars or simply disappeared. We’ve also had a lot of cats just walk into our garden. We have food out for our household cats, and the interlopers recognise a free buffet when they see one. Several of them have been clever enough to work out the cat flap in double-quick time. One, Isabel, who we’d decided to take in, then went and...