I kept Lizzie captive for almost three weeks while her leg mended until she was at last ready to be released. Looking back, I marvel how I did it and whether I was completely mad. She was my first experience of feral cats and I had no notion of their lifestyle. As a child, there had always been cats and kittens in our household – my father in particular was a feline fan. Tabitha, Mrs White Puss, Ginger and Biscuit… they were purring, friendly creatures who loved to be stroked and petted. They liked to play and to snuggle up on any available lap.
Feral cats are as wild as their ancestors and like any other wild creature they have an innate mistrust of human beings. The mother cats take a firm paw with their kittens, training them to be quiet and stay put. A meow might attract predators, as could the movement of kittens running about and playing. Often a feral cat that is taken into a home or shelter will revert to a playful kitten, making up for its childhood. Mothers will also make their kittens wash and wash to remove the scent of food from their fur, which again could attract the enemy. Their games have grim undertones preparing the offspring for the life of a feral. A mother may play very roughly with the dominant male kitten, training him to be an alpha male. She will teach her kittens to go to the food dish, forever watchful and poised to run, should a human appear. It is a game, but one of survival.
Dogs like wide, open spaces; cats like security. The mothers make their kittens follow them in a row like ducklings, and discipline those who get out of line, another survival instinct. They allow play at dawn and dusk when the night predators are not around but it is light enough for them to see well, but they make their kittens go into a safe place at night.
Many of them have spent their entire existence living rough near a source of food: a waste heap, dustbin or in the vicinity of a hotel or restaurant. Their lives are based on scrounging for scraps of food, often very scarce, and reproducing. They are likely to be riddled with fleas or ticks and certainly have worms. The tomcat battles for supremacy and can inflict nasty wounds on the female in their savage mating.
A human cat bond can be forged if the feral kitten is handled early enough in its life. Even so, not all kittens are the same and their degree of friendliness depends on other factors, such as the father’s genes. Also, because the female will have mated with several toms there can be different temperaments within the same litter of kittens as well as different colourings. The older they become, the more difficult it is to alter their wild nature, as I found with Lizzie.
When we opened that trap in Giulio’s surgery, I had no idea what I was about to take on. Lizzie’s one thought was to escape – throwing herself against the walls, dashing round the room; anything to get away from us. During her time in the apartment she was constantly stressed, wanting to be outdoors leading the life she knew. Anyone who takes it upon herself to tame a feral feline is in for a long haul. Humans have to learn to think like a feral and never to force contact: touching is viewed as a threat and direct eye contact regarded as aggression. If she is frightened she is likely to attack, and feral cat scratches can be very nasty indeed. As time passed and I gained experience in working with feral cats, I came to realise that the best way to help them is to catch them and have them neutered before returning them to their colony. It might seem a brutal existence to us, but it is usually far more unkind to take them away.
A few days later, I was in the bus park seeing Andrew onto the airport bus, bound for England. I waved him goodbye and shed a few tears. This had been an extraordinary time together. Then I went back to the apartment and Lizzie. Now I was alone and free to enjoy my contemplation of Isola Bella.
Every time I left the apartment, my little tower, I noticed a group of people standing on the nearby Belvedere gazing down at The View. I photographed it at different times of the day: morning, noon, evening, it was never the same. Fluctuating with the mood of the weather, it seemed to have a persona of its own; I had become enchanted by this constantly changing scene.
The light changed all the time and the blue through shades of cerulean to turquoise to jade. Sometimes the water resembled ribbed silk as the currents from the Messina straits streamed in. Other times the sun painted it with molten silver so dazzling you needed dark glasses to gaze at it.
I never grew tired of looking.