The Great Sicilian Cat Rescue (18 page)

T
aormina is a hothouse bloom, aloof in both a physical and psychological sense from the rest of Sicily. At one time I believed its romantic beauty was the real thing, though the view of Isola Bella certainly comes straight from an Italian movie and is the favourite image of tourist offices. Now I recognise this small town as an island within an island, offering the phoney face of the Italy travellers dream of visiting. It is the Sicily you read about in books or see on television, a feast for all the senses, but, as I have learned, it is a dream that doesn't come true.

Apart from my tours of the island as a journalist when I had stayed in good hotels and visited tourist sites, I had seen little of the real Sicily nor experienced the waste and poverty that sully this island. All this was changed in 2007 when I organised a neutering trip to Mascali in the province of Catania.

I can't remember how I first contacted Valeria, but during the winter of 2006 she and I spoke often on Skype. In her husky voice she described her work with L'Arca, an animal refuge, in the town of Giarre. It was the familiar story of cats and dogs dumped, of innumerable puppies and kittens, and the lack of compassion among many of the local people.

‘We try to get them neutered but we're just a group of volunteers using our own money to finance the refuge. Practically every day we arrive to find someone has left yet another box of kittens or puppies by the gate. It never ends,' she explained.

I told her about the past years' work in Taormina and Letojanni and related the number of cats we had been able to neuter within a week. This was carried out due to the generosity of donors to Catsnip.

There was a pause and, when she spoke, Valeria's tone was wistful: ‘It sounds like my dream come true. If only something like that could happen here. Do you think you could arrange it, Jenny?'

In spite of all my misgivings of the year before, I heard my voice say that, if she could find a location for the operations, I would organise yet another neutering week. She leapt at the idea.

‘There is a vet near here who is keen to work like this. He's quite young and he has lived in the States and is very open-minded. What do you think? Shall I ask him if your team could use his surgery?'

Andrew's voice swam into my head: ‘You're a glutton for punishment.'

Before I had time to give it proper consideration, Valeria
came back to me. Yes, Dottore Trefiletti would welcome the idea: ‘He'll put a room at your disposal and your vet can use his anaesthesia equipment. There's also a van you can use for transporting the cats and several of the refuge's volunteers have said they will help catch cats. Oh, Jenny, I can't wait!'

I came off the phone in a daze. Of course I couldn't go back on my word but I really hadn't thought it through. It would be the first time I organised a trip completely alone, without the help of Elke. Up until now, she had always been my important link in Sicily and I realised how much I missed her practical approach. I needed a plan. Obviously, my first step should be to find a vet willing to come out with me.

Sheba's health had improved and she was beginning to behave like a less institutionalised cat; however, she had an ongoing ear irritation and needed treatment. During a visit to Guy, my vet, I plucked up courage and blurted out: ‘I don't know if you would be interested but I'm planning to take another veterinary team to Sicily…'

Guy's eyes sparkled. ‘Sicily!'

I could tell he was imagining the deep-blue sea and tantalising promise of cinematic Taormina and so I felt I had to be truthful.

‘I've never been to Mascali. As far as I know, it's a provincial town not far from Catania airport. We'd be using a local vet's surgery for the operations but again I don't know what the conditions would be like. However, it could be an interesting experience.'

Guy didn't hesitate. He reminded me of his background in his native South Africa. From a very young age, he had tended sick animals and, in spite of his parents' misgivings,
his ambition had always been to be a vet. For several years, he had worked with large animals in the bush. He had learned to treat big cats, not the small ones I was speaking of.

Guy set out to travel the world. His planned six months' stay in the UK turned out to be a bit longer – nineteen years and counting – as he found Sussex a great place to live. As with so many of the people who had come to my rescue in Catsnip projects, Guy's involvement had arrived at just the right time. I remembered Elke's remark when I had carried ketamine from Britain to Sicily that an angel must be looking after me!

‘I'd be very interested,' he assured me. ‘Just give me enough warning so I can arrange leave.'

So I went back to Valeria. ‘I think I have found just the right vet – but where would we stay? I don't have a large sum of money available and I also have to feed the team, not to mention get them there.'

‘No problem, I'm sure I can find something. Let me see what I can do.'

She seemed to have the same ability to get things done as Elke. Only a few days later, I heard the now familiar, husky voice.

‘I've been in touch with my friend Vittorina, who's a great animal lover. She owns a small hotel in Mascali, where Davide's surgery is, and is offering rooms for your team.'

Team
! This threw me into a panic. Besides Guy, we would need a nurse and someone with expert experience as a cat catcher. For the next week, I racked my brains but could think of nobody. Then I began to muse on how my need to do something to help animals had come about long before
the discovery of Lizzie. I cast my mind back to an event that, within a few weeks, changed many people's lives, shocking them into taking a stand against cruelty. Like me, they had probably always loved animals in a general sense but the ‘Siege of Shoreham', as it came to be called, was a catalyst. Starting out as an animal welfare issue, it developed into that of multi concerns, the cruel basis of the whole dairy industry, a change of attitude towards the British bobby – and even a xenophobic reaction to the EU.

T
he local paper had been full of it: shippers were planning to use Shoreham harbour for the export of live animals to the continent. The local community was outraged and word went round, urging people to join the protest. A few days into 1995 on a dank, dark night, 200 of us gathered near the entrance to the harbour swaddled in scarves, thick jackets and gloves. We stood in groups and shivered, waiting for what? At that point we had no idea. Then the cry went up: ‘They’re coming!’

All these years later, I can still remember the shock of what I saw… towering trucks bearing young calves, heading for the docks. Sad, bewildered eyes peered through the slatted side of the containers: baby animals torn from their mothers, bound for the veal crates and a short life of suffering. The reaction of the crowd was amazing. As if we’d done this kind
of thing before, as one we surged forward onto the road, our collective aim to halt those trucks. That night we took the police by surprise. There were only fifty of them and they hadn’t been prepared to find the road blocked by angry protesters. After a half-hour of this confrontation, the trucks were turned back. There would be no shipment that night.

On the following night, more people had joined us at the port. What was remarkable and later seized on by the newspapers was the diversity of these demonstrators and their solidarity: a young man with dreadlocks chatted to an elderly lady with blue-rinsed hair; a man with a dog dispensed old-fashioned winter mixture to the shivering crowd. All ages, all sizes, all drawn here by this atrocity. I spotted a reclusive character who lived on the corner of my street and whose sole preoccupation seemed to be tending his roses. He stood a little apart from everyone else but nevertheless joined in our taunting of the police. The common cause broke down barriers, uniting us in a growing hostility towards the law. They were to become as much outsiders to our community as the faceless hauliers brutalising animals… but not yet.

Sussex Police had merely doubled its number, which meant once again they couldn’t stop us. By now the media had got hold of the story and managed to turn it into one of an anarchist riot with yobs attacking ill-equipped bobbies. As is so often the way, it was all taken out of context. A balaclava-clad activist who scrambled onto the cab of a truck full of calves was pictured smashing its windscreen with a brick. It was an isolated incident, I can’t remember it happening again, but it was shown on television over and over again so that it appeared to be a multi-attack. We didn’t care; what
mattered to us was that these trucks of young animals were leaving our shores for the slaughterhouses and veal crates of Johnny Foreigner and we were incensed, we would do all we could to stop it. At least, for the moment, we had succeeded. When interviewed, television writer and animal lover Carla Lane said: ‘These people have done more in a few days to bring this cruelty to public attention than people like me have done by peaceful discussion over years.’

It was a heady feeling. For several days our little band had stopped the live exports and the country was talking about us. The day-to-day routine of life changed, centred round tide tables and news of when the next shipment might be due. Many of us reorganised our day around this… sleeping at odd times, doing little housework, alert for the moment when the phone rang and a voice said, ‘I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.’ Everything else seemed like a dream, but we hadn’t won yet. Whatever the Sussex Police felt as individuals, and I heard several of them voicing their dislike of this trade, they were duty-bound to allow those shameful trucks through.

The next thing we knew was they had shipped in 1,500 officers from other forces and block-booked several Brighton hotels to accommodate them, to ensure the passage of the trucks. It was to cost £200,000 a night. With the arrival of the Met, scenes erupted you would never imagine happening in Middle England. For many people, and I have to include myself here, it curdled mistrust for our police, which has never gone away entirely. Imagine riot police punching elderly ladies, throwing children against walls; wading in, feet first, on families sitting in the road. An exaggerated and heavy-handed attack, it was to be repeated at Brightlingsea,
Essex, where, in the same year, another attempt at exports was going on. There, another reaction by the local community ensued. As the battles raged for hours, then days, then weeks and then months, it led to over 300 arrests and many people being injured. But in the end, People Power won.

During those long vigils I talked to a lot of people or sat among them in the little cafe where we went for a warming cup of tea. There was Justine, a veterinary nurse, and Helen, who had left her cleaning job to join in the siege. The experience of that demo changed so many lives.

I remembered Justine had used her holiday leave to go and work in an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. Helen’s one-woman quest to release ill-treated animals had nearly landed her in jail. I contacted them and, to my delight, they both agreed to join us. My team was complete.

We were all in high spirits when we arrived at Catania airport. I don’t know what I was expecting, but the mental picture I had associated with Valeria’s husky voice did not approximate with the glamorous redhead waiting with husband, Antonio Cundari.

‘Jenny!’

We hugged and kissed as if we had known each other for years.

The Oasi Park hotel at Mascali was just that: an oasis of calm set among palm trees. Vittorina was waiting to greet us, a large, lumbering dog at her side. Over the next few days, I came to know her as a big woman with a chain-smoking habit, outspoken when it came to the driving behaviour of Sicilians, and with a deep love of cats. My room was right at the top of the building, a kind of attic with a sloping roof,
and I loved it. After a hectic day at the surgery, it came to be my little retreat.

That night, we all assembled for dinner at the Cundari’s apartment in neighbouring Giarre. It was to be the first of many during that week when Valeria conjured up delicious meals in surprisingly little time. Davide Trefiletti was working late at his surgery but finally joined us and sparred with his fellow vet Guy over a glass of red wine. We ate, we drank; it was a riotous evening. I wondered how we were ever going to get up early the following morning to start our work, but somehow we did.

I soon discovered that Mascali was a very different place from Taormina. Situated in eastern Sicily, low in the shadow of Mount Etna, the town has suffered many times over the centuries from both earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

In November 1928, there was a disastrous event, which led to lava largely destroying the town. This eruption of Etna was the most destructive since 1669, when the city of Catania was overwhelmed. In just over a day, Mascali was devastated but there had been an orderly evacuation of its inhabitants. Families, helped by the military, were able to remove furniture and fittings from their houses. Evacuees were relocated to nearby towns, staying with relatives, friends or in hired apartments. A completely new town was constructed. The style was that of an urban checkerboard layout influenced both by towns in Sicily dating from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries but also with many of the buildings reflecting the ‘fascist architecture’ of the time. It was completed by 1937 and housing conditions were very advanced in comparison with other towns in the region.
Many people seem unconcerned about living in towns and villages in the shadow of Etna. However, the 1928 event demonstrated that lava is able to reach the lower flanks of the volcano within a short period after the onset of an eruption.

Davide’s surgery was situated in a small side street and buzzed with activity. It was the scene of much coming and going of owners with their pets. Obviously, he was a popular and well-loved vet in the area. Above his main surgery, he had allotted a large room where we could store our traps and house cats in recovery cages. I’d bought more of the stacking cages, which saved space. Lovely Catherine at Metalcote, the company I use for supplies, had cleverly packed my veterinary supplies inside them and they’d travelled to Mascali ahead of us, by road. I established a simple checking in and out system, entering each cat into an exercise book and ticking it off when it was returned to its colony. Further along the landing was a smaller room, where we set up a makeshift surgery.

While Guy was setting out his instruments and arranging the operating table, Helen was on tenterhooks, anxious to begin. Very thin and wiry, she reminded me of Angela and I recalled that the evening before she had eaten like a bird. But she proved to have enormous energy and skill in catching cats. We loaded the traps in Davide’s rather erratic van and lurched off. At other times, I went out with Valeria when we drove through small towns I hadn’t seen since the time I used to visit Giampilieri, near Messina.

That village was set far back from the road, almost in the manner of villages built to withstand the Saracens. We had to walk for quite a long time from the station pass under a railway arch and by the side of a dried-up riverbed. All kinds
of junk had been thrown into it: oil-cans, clothes, furniture and even, I suspected, dead animals. The streets were mean and narrow, the houses gazed into each other’s windows as their inhabitants watched and gossiped about their neighbours. In winter, they would stand open fires – the
conce
– on the steps outside the houses and, as I passed, I felt a waft of heat against my legs.

We roamed over a wide area, setting the traps in the grounds of apartment blocks and in a churchyard where scrawny cats roamed among the tombstones of weeping angels and what looked like small houses inhabited by the dead. Valeria had done her homework well and knew exactly where to direct us.

One day, she loaded up her car with tins of cat food and told me we were going to visit Maria, a local
gattara
. We stopped in a grey, litter-strewn street and Valeria turned to me.

‘Wait in the car,’ she advised. ‘Maria is out of work and rather embarrassed about accepting help but she takes care of so many cats and I try to help her as much as I can.’

A few minutes later, she called me over to where Maria stood on her doorstep, arms hugging her skinny body, clothed in a threadbare cardigan and floral pinafore. Her face was haggard, but she gave me a brief smile.

‘Jenny is here to help with our work,’ Valeria explained. ‘Over this week we are going to catch as many cats as we can and neuter them. We’ll be treating them too, so if you have any sick cats…?’

I met Maria’s eye and wondered how she saw me. Our worlds were very different – a wealthy benefactor from
Northern Europe, perhaps? I was hardly that, but it was my turn to feel embarrassed.

Valeria spoke rapidly in the local dialect and Maria led the way to the back of the building, where there was a large stretch of waste ground littered with rubbish, old bicycles, oil drums… all kinds of things. Cats gazed at us inquisitively, then ran away. It seemed to me such a scene of desolation and lost hope, a kind of acceptance of fate. We fetched the traps and set them about the place.

Maria’s dull eyes showed the first bit of interest. Again, Valeria spoke to her in dialect, explaining what we were doing.

‘And it doesn’t cost anything?’ For the first time, Maria seemed to approve of me.

On another day, two young women joined us on our cat-catching expeditions. They were each called Giovanna, one a tall, voluptuous woman and the other slender and petite, prone to bursting into tears if she saw a sick cat or kitten. They were a wonderful help and got the hang of the traps in no time at all. Soon they took off on their own, triumphant each time they caught a feline.

‘Big Giovanna’, as we called her, was afraid of no one. Once a woman shot up her window and bawled across the road: ‘You are murderers! You are catching those cats to kill them, aren’t you?’

Big Giovanna planted herself fair and square on the pavement, hands on her large hips, and hurled back a stream of swear words, only some of which I understood. She was obviously too powerful an adversary; the window slammed shut.

On another occasion, the traps were attracting far too much attention. A small crowd had gathered, wondering at these strange contraptions and wanting to know how they worked. The cats were wisely keeping out of the way. Big Giovanna lost her patience. She pushed her way forward and stood like a policeman at the scene of a road accident, ordering the onlookers away. I half-expected her to shout: ‘Nothing to see, nothing to see!’ Not surprisingly, the crowd moved off sheepishly.

Davide was very interested in Guy’s surgical procedure, the keyhole method I had already watched when Frank Caporale, the American vet, came to Taormina. One day, clambering up the stairs with yet another cat in a carrier, I was intrigued to hear the buzz of voices and a burst of laughter coming from the surgery. There was Guy surrounded by a group of young men and women. He was demonstrating this far less invasive method to them, gesturing in an animated way to make up for his lack of Italian.

‘They’re veterinary students from Messina,’ Davide explained. ‘They’re still being taught the old methods – I thought this was a great opportunity for them.’

He was right. They stood there watching wide-eyed, as if Guy were a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

The meals chez Cundari continued to be sumptuous throughout the week. I wondered at how Valeria managed to juggle teaching in the mornings, doing her stint at the refuge and helping with the cat catching in the afternoons before she took her place at the oven, producing delicious food. Some of the dishes conjured up memories of those I’d learned to prepare during the time I lived in Taormina.
Spaghetti Aglio
,
Olio e Peperoncino
has ingredients that are deceptively simple but, when well prepared, it is very tasty. Garlic and hot peppers or pepper flakes are sautéed in olive oil until the garlic is pale gold. This sauce is stirred into al dente spaghetti; parsley is added and the dish is served immediately.