prayerful of dreams - 2008-06-28
preschool princess - 2008-06-16
life with my sweetheart - 2008-04-29
the fast approach of four - 2008-04-12
lighting up my own life - 2008-03-08

2002-03-17 - 12:22 p.m.

In a few weeks, I will find myself back in Rome. My memories of Italy are as such. Cats. everywhere.

You see, we were staying by the Borghese ( Bor gay za) Gardens, which is a big park in Roma, and everyday,I would stroll through the park. And I came across a very large population of cats, in every size and colour. All meowling and vying for my attention, and I sat on a bench, and 30 or so of them, came up to me, and started rolling onto their bellies and showing me their sweet little faces and several jumped up next to me, and begged to be petted. I was quite captivated by them, but also deeply concerned. How sad it all seemed. I spent the next few hours, in a blue haze, stroking and memorizing there faces and observing their nuances and mentally assigning them names, to go along with their personalities. I contemplate moving to Rome, and getting a rambling apartment with a huge balcony and taking all the cats home with me, and then everyone would refer to me as the crazy cat girl. and maybe we would be happy. Afterall, every respectable spinster needs 50 or more cats. Right?

and then I imagined my cats, here, cold and hungry and starving and looking into there tiny faces, i could not take it anymore. I decided I had to feed them, but since I had no idea where a grocery store could be found, I walked over to the sandwich man, hawking wares out of his little vendor mobile, and pantomined, and begged, pleaded, fake italian asked him, to "sella mia alla his a meata" and we struck some sort of weird deal, where I showed him several million lira, and he forked over a paper plate piled with stringy luncheon meat of some sort, and shook his head at the crazy carnivorouos girl, who needed so much meat. and back I went to the clearing where all my felines are, and I start rationing out the meat, and through the brush, appears about another 20 cats, only these are kittens of various size and now I just burst into tears to see them come running from the edges of the park, for a few scraps of meat. and I notice as tiny grey one, with only one eye. His other eye is sealed shut and it looks as though it has a massive infection.I try to get the little greyface one eyed kitten to come to me, so I can pet him, but he is too feral and afraid. Well, this finishes me for good, I sit, on the bench and sob, because I just want to wrap them all up in my arms, and cuddle them, and give them a home, with a soft bed,and a saucer of cream and a burning fireplace for them to curl up in front of and softly sleep. Because, they deserve this. and I want to speak to them in Italian, because they are Italian kitties and tell them how beautiful they are, and feel them purring against my breaking heart. I stay with them, and decide I need to go back to the cranky meat man, and purchase more. I start to walk away and half the kitties follow me. I am now the pied piper of Borghese gardens. One crazy 6 ft 1 blonde American girl, being followed by 30 straggly Italian kitties. And the mean meat man shakes his head and piles high another plate for me, and I tell him to make it " duo " and I throw a few more million lira at him, ( I never could figure out the exchange rate at that time, all I knew is, that suddenly when my travel money was converted I became a lira millionara) and so I walk back across the park, past the old men playing Bocci, and the laughing Italian children playing soccer in the far off fields, past the Italian dogs,with ornate leashes, on their afternoon stroll with their elegant mistresses that are wearing cashmere capes, and shiny Italian leather shoes, and turning right at the fountain, and back over to the corner, where the cats dwell, thickly in underbrushes adjacent to the old rusted Borghese Gardens zoo bars. and I feed my kitties again, and night is falling and the park is closing and I know I have to take leave, and so I gather my things, and pat them farewell and I walk away, only this time, a few decide to still follow me out of the park, sqeezing through the Wrought Iron gates, and slipping down sidestreets with me, as I make my way back to my hotel. I am worried now, because they have followed me, one happens to be heavily pregnant, and this concerns me. I stop every few feet and plead with them, to go back, but they don't listen to me in English or Bad Italian. I approach my hotel, and the doormen greet me with a robust " buon giourno bella Senorina" and I glance over my shoulder at the kitties, who seem to have stopped, and are watching me disappear into the spinning Glass Doors of my Hotel. and the doormen tease me, telling me,that cats are not allowed inside. and I smile weakly and go to my room, and lay on my bed, and think, what has just happened?

and every morning, when I leave the hotel, the cats are lurking outside covertly hiding under beautiuflly shaped evergreen hedges and they spill out at my feet, as I try to walk past them, to accompany my grandmother on the mandatory siteseeing holy grail. and in the afternoon, the cats are my dirty little secret, I stalk the streets looking for a grocery store, where I buy economy sized bags of cat food, and special tins for the lanky kittens. and I try to pretend that my departure date is not in less than 4 days. and I siesta in the park, and I take pictures of my kitties, and I play with them, in the sunshine. and this is sheer rapture, they have utterly and totally beguiled me. and everywhere I go, I am haunted by them. I see there faces in the reflection of the splashing water from the Trevi Fountain, I light candles in the Vatican, so that they might be kept safe, I go to the collisseum, and amidst the tourist lunacy of the cheesy mock gladiators, that pose with big bellied, Loud Americans, in souvenir pictures, I feel the piercing stare of the cats, tucked in the corners of the ancient ruins. There are so many of them, at the Collisseum, that they seem to be the guardians of the crypt. In their gaze, I see Ancient Rome. I feel almost as if they are the return of the Roman Soldiers that once stood watch framed in the same arches and silhouetted against the same Roman backdrop of dipping into blue splendour sky.

and then, it is my last day in Rome, before an early morning flight. I am morose and feel an unshakeable sadness, at the thought of leaving them behind. I spend the last day, which hangs heavy and grey like my mood, sitting on the bench in the cat's corner. I spread out the ~never enough~ food, that I managed to bring, and try to make sure that the grey kitten gets his fare share, and as the night starts to wear a biting chill, I hunch tighter into my coat and decide I have to head back. I speak to the kitties and wish them well. They cock their soft heads, the kittens, leaping in mid air in play, pause to listen to the crazy girl. They stare at me, with some sort of expectation and all knowing gratitude. As I start to walk away, a few brave ones follow me down the winding gravelled path, and out of the gates, and then I pass through the Wrought Iron gates, and into the night that will become the morning that will take me away far far away from here. I glance through the Iron slats,one last time, and see 2 foreign women sitting on a bench attempting to eat some kind of food, and several of the cats have approached them. The women start screaming at them, and kicking them away, the cats scatter into a calico array of fear, and my eyes flash with rage. HOW DARE THEY KICK MY CATS! I suck in my breath and gather myself to a full and imposing stance, and start to walk back into the park, ready to say something but what? I am trying to think of how I want to handle the situation, when suddenly, I see a leather clad figure, hop off a motorbike. He starts screaming at the women, they are gypsies, the kind that plague Rome, and this dark haired hero, swings several backpacks over his shoulder and hisses profanity at the women, as he swaggers past them. I am dumbstruck as the cats start pouring out of the bushes and chasing him, back to the far corner where they seem to live. I walk back into the park, and follow 30 cats, following one leather clad boy. and then I watch, as he starts pulling tupperware bowls out of his bursting backpacks, and tins of cat food, and he begins to assemble heaping bowls of food complete with pasta for the cats. I am so astounded, and my response is so emotional, that again, i start to feel tears in my eyes. And then, I watch in utter awe as the little grey face kitten, comes to him, and brushes against leather boy's ankle. And then, leather boy, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a tube of medicine, and bends to tend to greyface's infected eye.

Leather boy is totally unaware of my prescence, but I am filled with a need to talk to him. I approach him, and he seems a bit startled, and I have tears pouring down my face, and I try to speak to him, but he does not speak english, so again, I try to pantomine my affection and admiration for what he is doing and then I thrust the contents of my change purse upon him, and try to explain that it is " for the kitties" he smiles and bows his head and says grazie a few times. and I take his picture with my cheap souvenir camera, and walk away, and don't look back, because I know my cats are going to be fine. I know greyface will be ok. It is dark and cold by now, but my heart is warm, and I feel such relief.

In the morning, Rome is under a mist of grey winter rain. We hurry into the taxi, and drive away from the hotel. As we pull away, I notice several of the cats, watching from the stone ledge, that curves along the hotel wall. They sit there, and stare intently at me. I wave. and I blow them a kiss. and I feel changed. I feel like I have had some kind of divine experience. I feel closer to God. To me, god is not to be found in a church or in a religious war. I saw god, in greyface's green green eye.

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