american cats & gatti italiani

One thing that we will miss while we're gone is our cats. We have 2 cats: Solomon (black, American short-haired) & Bengal (part lilac Siamese) - both that we adopted several years ago from the Humane Society. We stopped at two, because Chris has a theory (which I tend to agree with) that if you have more cats than people in a household, you become one of those "weird cat people". Not always true - but it keeps us from collecting any others. At first, we'd thought that we would plan to bring them along for our move, since we knew we'd be stationary for at least 8 months in an apartment, but then the rest of the year we'd be traveling and would have to send them back to the US. The transportation issues didn't seem too bad, since Italy doesn't require a quarantine, but the more we thought about it, the more we didn't think it'd be such a good idea. They almost go into shock even driving them in the car to the vet and there are some scary stories about pet transport in planes. Also, since we're traveling for 2 weeks before moving in our apartment, they wouldn't be able to be on the same flight, which I found out creates a whole new problem. Then there's the spontaneous weekend trips we plan to take while we're studying and I'm not sure how easy it would be to find a pet-sitter.

Right now, we leave for a couple days and all we have to have someone do is pour more food in their dish (we have a water dispenser that lasts about 2 weeks)....and flush the toilet! YEP!...our cats use the toilet. We trained them about 3 years ago to do this. (In the photo, you'll see the walls of an aluminum pan which is part of the training process, but it's open at the bottom so anyone can use the toilet like normal as well.) And our friends who are living in our house while we're gone are excited to have the cats as part of the package. It does make me feel better to know that Solomon and Bengal won't be taken our of their comfort zone and they'll have friendly people watching over them.

But one thing that there isn't a shortage of in Italy is cats.

We came across many feline friends during our visits to different Italian cities, including a pair of strays in Monterosso (photo 3), and an amorous tabby who took a liking to Chris at a cafe one night and then found him again in another cafe the next morning (photo 5). The Cinque Terre trail had food and donation buckets for the strays along the paths that were caught, neutered, and released again by the local animal group (photo 2). Rome, of course, was full of entire packs of cats among the ancient ruins (photo 4), and Positano had many animal-friendly watering bowls outside the steep mosaic-filled sidewalks (photo 1).

We may just have to adopt one for our stay in Italy...well, at least maybe just find a "regular" near our street that we can name and pet occasionally.