The Great Sicilian Cat Rescue (8 page)

And he was off, his long, thin body slithering into the crowd, and I was left with a strong feeling I’d been cheated. There was something about his manner, the swift, practised way he had gone through those books and packed them away that convinced me they were far more valuable than the price he’d paid for them. After that I was always careful to examine every donation before I put it on sale.

Those car boot sales were mortifying, threatening to crush my enthusiasm for my project. The final straw came when, after spending hours on hand-stitching a series of cushion covers, absolutely no one showed the slightest interest. I calculated my overall takings, £67.13p. That wouldn’t take
me far. So I turned my back on the community centre and decided to try something else.

Time was passing and, if I wanted to launch Catsnip the following year, I’d have to get a move on. Perhaps selling wasn’t for me. I was, after all, a journalist and writing was my forte. Suzy’s voice came into my mind.

‘We contacted various charities and some of them were very good in giving us a grant. I can give you a list, if you like.’

The letter writing came easily enough and I was able to explain my aims clearly: ‘to take a team of vet, nurse and helpers to Sicily to treat and neuter feral cats, considering that the local authorities do nothing to ameliorate the problem’. I also had to fill in application forms, something I more than dislike but seem to have a block about. Nevertheless, I put my head down and soon they were in the post.

I wrote articles about Lizzie’s story and one of them appeared in a little magazine called
Animals’ Voice.
Betty, Jayne and Tracy are three wonderful women who rescue and care for wildlife in the New Forest area of Hampshire. Their magazine covers all kinds of animal issues and they were kind enough to include mine. The response was excellent; I was so touched by the readers’ letters. Often women, they were by no means wealthy but sent me what they could afford. The balance in my building society grew and, when I received substantial cheques from three of the charitable organisations I had written to, I knew I could go ahead.

So I phoned Elke, my landlady. Before I had left Taormina we had had a long talk and she had agreed to help in any way she could.

‘How’s the weather?’

‘Don’t mention it,’ I replied. ‘We are having awful wind and rain.’

‘It’s sunny here,’ came the cheery voice, ‘not all that warm, but sunny.’ She laughed. ‘But you don’t want to talk about the weather! How are you doing?’

‘Good news, I’m ready to start planning the trip,’ I told her. ‘I have the money but I don’t know where we can operate. I’ve asked my vet if he’d be part of the team, but he’s busy.’

There was silence for a moment. Elke was obviously absorbing this.

‘I have an idea,’ she said at last. ‘Remember Ines, the woman who lived in the downstairs apartment where you stayed?’

Yes, I remembered her, a rather eccentric German woman but undoubtedly a lover of cats. I’d heard her calling them in to be fed, every evening.

‘She has a summerhouse – it’s big and secluded. It would be the perfect place. No one would see what we were doing.’

‘And the vet?’

‘Leave it with me, I’ll see what I can do.’

Within days she was back to me. Yes, Ines had said we could use the summerhouse and she had managed to persuade an American friend who was a vet to volunteer his services. All I had to do was pay for his flight from the States. Frank Caporale was on board.

That year, I hardly noticed Christmas. The moment it was over I began to assemble the equipment I would need. There were traps and cages to order, which would be sent by road and delivered upon my arrival in Sicily. Guy, my sister’s vet,
had given me a list of the drugs and other things I would need for the ‘surgery’. As the idea of this project took shape, I became increasingly bolder in asking people to give me things. I wrote to several drug companies and some of them donated necessary medicines. My local hospital in Worthing offered forceps and scissors. Other equipment I had to buy from veterinary supply firms.

Daffodils appeared in my garden and the days lengthened. There were copies of the May 2003 Brighton Festival brochure in the library. Sometimes I despaired I would ever be ready in time. During the week before I left England, I was still rushing round collecting last-minute supplies. Finally, I was faced with the problem of how to get the drugs and surgical supplies from the UK to Sicily. And here I must say my ignorance proved a blessing: I had absolutely no idea of the nature of ketamine, the drug used by vets in the absence of inhalant anaesthetic. I knew nothing about its use as a recreational drug, stronger than the same amount of speed or coke and with unpredictable effects. Drug taking has never appealed to me, though I do enjoy a glass of good wine. Where I was concerned, it was just one item on my list of veterinary drugs and I treated it as such. Of course, I know better now and I shudder to think of what I was doing when I packed everything into a large box, covered it with brown paper and labelled it ‘SICILIAN CAT WELFARE’.

O
n the morning of my departure I unloaded the box from the taxi boot and onto a trolley to trundle it through to check in. The man at the desk took one glance at it and said it would have to travel as an oversized parcel. He didn’t ask what was inside. I don’t want to imagine the almost certainly different scenario in these days of high security. As I watched it disappear into the chute I heaved a sigh of relief, but again I was unaware of any risk I had run. On the plane I relaxed and ordered a glass of wine – I was on my way.

Eleven years ago, Catania airport was quite small and I don’t remember much in the way of security. When my oversized parcel appeared on the carousel, I snatched it off and handed it over to the waiting taxi driver. Off we went, through Catania, with its Baroque buildings, wide avenues and squares, splendid churches and monasteries. The city was
repeatedly destroyed over the centuries by eruptions of Etna. In 1693, a massive earthquake levelled much of it, but its citizens bounced back, using lava stone to create an even better city. An aura of the eighteenth century still lingers over much of its heart.

Every year, for three days, the streets of Catania surge with thousands of people following the procession of their beloved patron saint, Agatha. The second evening, 4 February, is probably the most emotional when, after a sleepless night, thousands of Catanese crowd the cathedral at dawn to greet the image of their saint as she is carried to the high altar and then placed, by the faithful, in a silver carriage. The figure borne high above the crowd is adorned with jewels donated by celebrities and sovereigns, including a cross that was given by the composer Vincenzo Bellini. This spectacle, which combines cult devotion and tradition, is almost unique in the world.

For centuries the people of Catania have looked upon Saint Agatha as their protector in times of trouble. On AD 1 February 252, a year after the young Christian woman was martyred, the story goes that a violent eruption was miraculously halted by holding up the virgin’s veil. Since then, the people of Catania have turned to the veil to conquer the menace of Etna. In 1444, and again during the catastrophic eruption of the seventeenth century, it appeared to stop the threatening flow of lava. Indeed, the veil continues to be brandished against the volcano to the present day.

We turned our backs on Catania, then took the familiar snaking roads that lead upwards to Taormina and, at last, turned into the little road leading to Elke’s house. She was
waiting at the gate, looking glamorous as ever with her mass of blonde curly hair and wonderful smile.

‘I’ve made it!’ I laughed and we fell into each other’s arms.

The huge parcel was unloaded and carried into the house.

‘I can’t believe you got that thing through!’ Elke marvelled. ‘There must have been an angel watching over you.’

In retrospect, I think that might well have been true.

As I stood on her terrace, gazing out over the sea glittering in the afternoon sunshine, I could hardly believe I had done it. All those months of planning had been a success. There I was in Taormina, poised to begin my adventure.

Once more I sat in Elke’s comfortable room with her cats. Nellie, Freddi, Nuovola and Giulio strolled about, sniffing at this visitor. I stayed with Elke overnight and we chatted over a leisurely breakfast; I was getting to know her better and liking what I found. I told her about my childhood in Surrey, the house with the big garden and all our animals.

‘My mother really preferred dogs, I think, but my father was crazy about cats. We had one called Ginger; he was my special cat and I cried for days when someone poisoned him. We suspected neighbours who had a mentally retarded son but we had no proof. There was another, a tortoiseshell who was constantly having kittens, but I suppose people didn’t think so much about neutering then as they do now.’

Elke refilled our coffee cups.

‘I was five months old when my father, a medical doctor, was called up by the Army to work during the Second World War,’ Elke told me. ‘I grew up in the little German town of Westphalia, and as we were so close to the industrial part of Germany, heavy bombing started after a few years. My
parents had a little rough-haired dachshund and that was my first love for an animal. Every night our town was bombed and we all had to sleep in bunk beds in the basement. I had an upper bunk and took the little trembling dog into my bed. I would tell Biene, that was her name, in English Bee: “Let us fall fast asleep so we don’t hear the airplanes coming, the whistle of the bombs falling down, and we will not realise if we should get hit.” Thank God we did not.

‘In 1945, my mother took my three sisters and me to friends in Bavaria. She thought that it would be safer there than in Westphalia. We lived on a farm with cows, pigs, chicken and sheep. I loved the calves and I found out how good fresh cow milk tastes. But I also saw how cruelly they killed chickens and poor piggies. I felt so sorry for them, but I guessed it had to be like that.

‘I made friends with a little mouse and brought some food to it. One day I took it in my hand, but the mouse did not like that and bit me on my little finger. That’s how I learned that we also have to be cautious with animals.

‘When I was about twelve or thirteen we moved into a nearby town. My father had come back late from war and prison. Every day on my way back from school, I met this beautiful shepherd dog; she was thin and very hungry and seemed not to belong to anybody. I always fed her some bread and we would sit together and I had to caress her. I found out that she belonged to a sick man in the neighbourhood and, when he died, she disappeared. Somebody must have taken her away. I was very, very sad not to see my good friend anymore.’

Two women sitting in a garden, sharing their childhood affection for animals: one German, one English, whose
countries were once at war. The love of animals transcends nationality and all the other categories we rely on to define ourselves. And the human–animal bond touches the deepest parts of our heart and emotions.

‘So, what brought you to Sicily in the first place?’ I was curious to know.

‘After I finished school I studied at an aviation school in Frankfurt in 1956. In those years it was very prestigious to become an air steward or reservations clerk. At the end of my studies I was taken on by Lufthansa, which was just coming into service again after the war, to work in the main office in Frankfurt. Here, I met my future husband, the Marchese Emilio Bosurgi from Messina, Sicily. His family owned the most important citrus essence distillery in Europe at that time.

‘When Pan American started to fly Boeing 707 from New York to Europe, I was employed as an air stewardess – such a good job in those times. Then I met my future mother-in-law and she offered me a good job in her industry as her public relations person. Not many people spoke languages at that time in Sicily and her company had international customers. The most important one was Coca-Cola USA, customers for lemon oil, which they needed for their basic syrup, sent all over the world. In those days I lived in a beautiful palazzo in Messina…’

Intrigued, I wanted to know what happened next, but at that moment Elke glanced at her watch.

‘Oh, look at the time! I have to be in Taormina by ten. If you can get your things together, I’ll drop you off at the apartment.’

I should have to wait patiently for the next instalment of Elke’s story.

‘Take tomorrow to settle in,’ she advised, as we bumped our way down the stony path. ‘Then, when the traps and cages arrive, we can start getting the summerhouse ready.’

She dropped me off in little Via Guardiola Vecchia and I let myself in. Once again I sat at the picture window, gazing down onto Isola Bella and marvelling yet again at the view. The sun danced over the sea in a myriad points of light, the blue flowers of the plumbago hung over the sunlit path. It felt like coming home.

Next day, I wondered anxiously whether the traps and cages would arrive. What would I do if there was a hitch? Time passed and I was on tenterhooks. It was halfway through the afternoon before I heard the sound of a large van drawing up in the street below and I rushed down to direct the driver up to the terrace.

Then it was down to work. Elke’s friend Ines opened up the summerhouse and we covered a large table with plastic sheeting and laid out the drugs, instruments and dressings. Another table was organised for the operations. The summerhouse boasted its own bathroom, which made us self-contained. Elke brought in high-powered lights, bowls for the sterilising liquid and the ever-welcome kettle. What a transformation! We stood gazing round with something like disbelief.

‘All set,’ said Elke.

On 6 June, Frank Caporale, the vet, together with Ross, a doctor who was to assist him, flew in from the USA. Elke had organised dinner at a small seaside restaurant and we
were all in high spirits as we tucked into pizza washed down with red wine.

‘I hear you’re into drug smuggling, Jenny,’ Frank teased. ‘It must have been those innocent blue eyes that fooled them.’

‘Oh, there’s more to Jenny than you know!’ Elke joined in the joke.

I shook my head. ‘I honestly didn’t know about ketamine,’ I protested.

Which made them laugh even louder.

Frank leaned over and refilled my glass. ‘Come on, folks, she’s done a great job!’ He raised his glass and the others followed.

‘To Jenny!’

This was my first experience of Frank’s gentle kindness. I glimpsed it many times during that week as we worked in the summerhouse for he treated every cat as an individual and kept a careful watch on them after their operations; they might have been his own pets. He was always calm and reassuring when I was upset by the effect of ketamine injections. Many of the cats seemed to go on a ‘trip’, jerking around the cage until they finally fell asleep.

‘It looks worse than it is,’ he told me. ‘They won’t remember anything when they wake up.’

I knew I had to believe him.

‘And think how much better lives they’ll have without constantly having kittens.’

Now I agreed wholeheartedly with that.

Our main problem was to sustain the supply of cats. Frank was highly skilled and worked very quickly. He told us he was prepared to operate day and night, if we could bring in the cats.
Every morning Elke and I went off with the traps in search of colonies. Earlier, she had visited the various cat ladies in the beach areas and explained what we were going to do. They were ready and very willing to help but the cats were not so cooperative. Catching a feral cat is a waiting game. They were very wary of the traps, even though there were tasty morsels waiting inside, but gradually their curiosity got the better of them and we would hear the satisfying snap as the door came down behind them. Then, with a towel thrown over the top to quieten them, we rushed back to the summerhouse to unload them into carriers before returning to start all over again. In this way we covered a large area, clambering up and down the steps that led to the beach, crouched behind a convenient wall to wait for our next customers.

Angela was one of our most dedicated helpers. Her love for cats verged on the fanatical and she threw herself unsparingly into this work. She was a small skinny woman, who battled constantly with her mother over this devotion.
Mamma
resented her taking any time away from the restaurant they ran together.

‘Don’t let her know I’m going out with you again this morning,’ Angela pleaded, ‘or she’ll fly into a terrible temper.’

We were treated to an example of this, one day, when the older woman stood on the terrace of the restaurant, screaming at her daughter, careless of her startled customers, who did not understand Sicilian and hadn’t a clue what was going on.

‘Angela’s wearing herself out,’ Elke remarked. ‘She eats like a sparrow and pushes herself to the extreme.’

Certainly, she looked exhausted, with dark circles under
her eyes. She had a permanently anxious expression and agonised over every cat she caught. When one of her own cats died, she was inconsolable.

‘I should have done more, I should have done more,’ she wailed.

‘Have you had something to eat?’ Elke, always concerned for other people, asked.

Angela nodded. ‘I’ve had an apple.’

‘You need to keep yourself strong,’ I added. I myself had suffered from anorexia in the past and could read the signs.

Diligent as she was, Angela taught me a valuable lesson: anyone who works for animals needs to safeguard their own health or they become weak and good for nothing, thus defeating the object. We have to accept our limitations – no one person can solve the problem, find loving homes for every animal, or rescue every wild creature in distress. Yet together we can make a huge difference and change the world for the better, one animal at a time.

The story of the starfish effect sums it up. A man is walking by the sea after a big storm. As he walks, he stops and picks up the starfish that have been washed ashore and throws them back into the water.

A passer-by stops and asks: ‘Why are you bothering to do that? There are so many that you can never make a difference.’

In reply, the man bends down and picks up another starfish, throws it into the water. ‘It made a difference to that one,’ he says simply.

No one person can save every homeless animal out there, nor can they stop all the cruelty in the world. What we can do, however, is make small differences. We can choose to
adopt a pet rather than buy one; we can volunteer our time to help a shelter or animal welfare organisation and we can teach the world’s children that animals need to be treated with respect. If we can’t afford anything else, we can still help spread the message and reach those who have the means but might not have even known there was a cause needing support. The important thing to remember is that we should never feel we cannot give enough and therefore there’s no point in even trying. If everyone in the world would do just one tiny thing to help animals, the change would be tremendous! The difference we make is felt by each and every individual animal that we save.