Wanderings

I need to talk about cats. And about power.
      It is tedious to hear people who love their animals—dogs, cats, gerbils, you name it—extol their pets’ virtues. (Who wants to know about dear Chunky’s latest exploits? Anton Chekhov called his pet ferrets Quinine and Bromide, by the way. And Virginia and Leonard Woolf had a marmoset named Mitz. Humans come up with the goofiest names for their animals…)
     So I am not going to talk about a pet of mine (though there is, in Brooklyn, a black cat called Zora who is indeed a pet of mine—an astonishing creature, much beloved and deservedly so, though she is currently committing adultery with our housesitter). I am instead going to talk about cats for whom the notion of “you’re mine” is risible. About cats born and raised without houses or “owners” or a clear sense of where the next meal is coming from—or whether, during rain or snow, there will be dry cover anywhere, or if survival will even be possible. Or for how long.
     If you’re a cat in Castiglione del Terziere—my current village-home in the hilly region of Lunigiana, Italy—you’re used to scaling walls and roofs. This village is medieval, steep-laned, and rocky. If you’re born here, you soon develop good leg muscles, tough claws, and an appetite for whatever comes your way: you don’t fuss over food. You sun yourself by lying on warmed stone. You roam the undergrowth in the fig- tree orchard just above our lane, or you lie languidly beneath one of the half-dozen cars in Il Collo, “The Neck”—the dead end at the base of Castiglione’s main lane. Or you ingratiate yourself with 85-year-old Rina, who might let you hang out by her door, and will feed you scraps. You must descend to one of several nearby creeks for water, then slink all the way back up after quenching your thirst.
     If you’re lucky and were born in the castle atop the village, you’ll get meals up there now and then—provided by Loris Jacopo Bononi and Raffaella Paoletti, who live there and don’t mind cats in their kitchen. (They rescued the castle from utter ruin, when it was just a heap of stones, a cats’ playground.) The castle’s library, which contains first editions of Dante, Petrarch, and other medieval and Renaissance authors, would make any well-educated cat’s head spin. But if you’re a Castiglione cat, although you might embody certain qualities associated with Renaissance folk (e.g., multiple skills, an eye for pleasure, keen awareness of who your friends and enemies are, healthy skepticism about both imperial and divine power), you won’t have much time to deploy those qualities. You’ll be working on nothing other than staying alive and well.

Tristana, as Antonio and I have dubbed her, has adopted us.
     She’s a wily girl. Little, solitary, stubborn. A roof-dancer. Soft-furred, her tail slightly bushy. Green-eyed, her gaze slightly askance, as if all the world strikes her as being a bit off-kilter.
     Tristana first started showing up not at our front door but on our terrace, a place reachable only by (1) coming through the front door—something no cat does, since we close it behind us whenever we come or go; or (2) climbing from a neighbor’s wall to that neighbor’s roof, thence to another and another and finally to ours, then down from our roof to the terrace. Trust me, it’s super-tricky getting to the terrace if you don’t walk in the front door. (If you’re not a cat and you try it, you’ll roll off and die.)
     Tristana was adept at all the maneuvers required. And careful not to let any other kitty follow her. She materialized on our terrace not long after we’d moved in, and watched us from the far end, taking our measure. Gradually crept in to grab scraps we’d leave for her near the terrace door. Then began showing up on the balcony outside our bedroom each evening. Inched closer to the bedroom door-window. Took to sitting there, staring impassively as I sweet-talked her. Grabbed and dragged to one corner a few bits of mozzarella I offered her. Bided her time til she felt sure I wasn’t going to do her harm.
     Long story short: Tristana now has me (and hard-hearted Antonio, too!) wrapped around her paw. We don’t allow her to spend the night inside, but she’s commandeered a chair in our living-room, on which she lounges, princess-like, for several hours of each day. In between naps, she accepts the prosciutto, fish scraps, and other delicacies we give her. For the longest time she rebuffed all my efforts at petting her, evasively corkscrewing her delicate little body each time my hand drew near. Recently, though, she’s decided that a bit of ear-rubbing would be a nice thing. And while I’m at it, a bit of side-rubbing too. And some backrubs. Again, please. Oh, and some more dry food. And a bit of water.
     All right, this account threatens to turn into one of those paeans to a pet that I (and you, reader) find obnoxious. So I shall stop. The point, anyway, wasn’t to focus on Tristana, though (as you’ll see from the photo) she’s a beauty. The thing I wanted to convey was this: it’s equal parts interesting and unnerving to live in a place amidst animals who are numerous (there must be thirty feral cats here!) yet wholly autonomous. Who count on the kindness of strangers—on Rina and Raffaella and myself—for food and affection, yet feel no need to express or even experience loyalty; it’s not an important virtue. Who respond to the pleasures of domesticity but know where to go at night when it’s cold, dark, and wet, and no human will follow them. Who fight and procreate and die in this village just as their fellow creatures have done for centuries.
     We, their human co-inhabitants, are bigger, and we have cars; we can move about without expending our bodies’ energy. We sometimes make things easier for the animals in Castiglione, but to them we’re mainly just part of the scene. We lack their kind of power, for we know nothing of all that goes on at night here—when the owls hoot and the donkeys bray and the wilder animals, those in the woods across the ravine (badgers, deer, perhaps a wild boar or two) make their noises, stirring and proclaiming and jeering and warning…
     We don’t know what they’re saying, can’t grasp their complex transactions. Must content ourselves with listening, if we awaken in the middle of the night, to an untrammeled realm—beautiful, terrifying—from which we’re excluded, and wondering what we’d do if we really had to survive there.