Favourite Last Words

"Never on Sunday" - 'It's too late!'
"Casablanca" - 'Here's to the start of a beautiful friendship'.
"Some Like It Hot" - 'Nobody's perfect.'
"The Maltese Falcon" - ' The stuff that dreams are made of'.

To Tsirigotiko

6th August, the Festival of the Sotirio at Avlemonas

Clouds over the Kastro - Photo by Eleni Harou

Cat lovers in Kythera may appreciate this.

I met Irene at the Potamos Sunday Market – a treat in itself. My own grandmother had a stall there many years before I was born. Anyway, Irene was selling jars of jams and spreads that she had made and a small, home-made cookbook of Kytherian recipes. I flipped through its pages wondering why I, a woman of Kytherian descent, would need to buy such a book written by a Dutchwoman. My Kytherian mother after all, had been a wonderful cook, as are all my aunts – not a single dud in the lot.

We started to chat, and you know how you can meet some people time and time and time again over the years, and your conversation never goes beyond the state of the weather, and with others, after five minutes you’re talking about the state of your soul – well Irene falls into the latter category.

We spoke for, oh I don’t know how long, and the first thing she told me was how she came to live in Kythera, because Irene is an exotic bird for a such a tiny little island, and yet she has made it her home and Kythera has happily made space for her. And it was very simple. As soon as she set foot on the tarmac, she had a feeling that she had come home. And that was it. All this she told me at that market in Potamos.

It’s easy to identify her house in Mitata. It’s the one where all the cats’ paw prints lead – across the road and through the gate, or up the wall, and inside. In the same way that Kythera has provided a haven for Irene, Irene is providing a haven for Kytherian cats. That’s the other thing we talked about in Potamos – the issue of the many stray cats on the island.

In some places, like Foca, a seaside resort town on the Turkish coast, the stray cat is king, because there are always enough tourists around to feed them little tidbits. But the poor old Kytherian strays don’t fare so well.

At night, in the village of Avlemonas, there’s a regular cat’s chorus, as the strays congregate and do what stray cats tend to do – fight and yowl.  You know, according to Google, there are five collective terms for domestic cats: clowder, cluster, clutter, glaring and pounce. I would add a sixth – cacophony. The night noises of those cats is part of the Avlemonas experience – at least where I was staying.

It so happens that I quite like cats, as our own cat Lilly, would attest if she could say more than ‘no’ – which she actually says quite clearly. But she expresses her utter confidence in my devotion by completely disregarding anything I say, secure in the knowledge that she can get away with anything. And she can.

So when Irene mentioned her organization Adopt A Cat, where for 4.60 Euros a month you could fund a cat, including having it neutered, it sounded like a good idea - particularly after a sleepless Avlemonas night.  Her website http://adoptacat.jimdo.com keeps us up to date with her cat-saving activities. And she has recently extended her sanctuary to other forms of wildlife as well, such as a hapless owl who almost came to a sticky end with some flypaper. Flypaper! Who uses that stuff anymore! Remember it , hanging off the ceiling with dead flies stuck to it? Yu-uck!

Anyway the owl’s rehabilitation is being lovingly continued and documented as I write this.

To judge by Irene’s Facebook page, you could be forgiven for thinking that Kythera has way more than its fair share of cats. It doesn’t. Kythera has its full complement of wild creatures, rabbits, hares, hedgehogs, peregrine falcons, voles, snakes (but not venomous), goats, lizards, tortoises, frogs and toads, to name but a few. But thanks to Irene and the people who support her, it has happier cats.

So far she has had the Avlemonas cats – at least twenty, vaccinated and neutered. To do this work she depends on support from the public, four euros sixty a month feeds a cat and seven euros ninety five covers the cost of neutering and vaccination as well.

Oh and the cookbook? I bought it. It’s very good.

Aristotle said....

Aristotle said that educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.

Mitropanos - Ta Kythera Pote The Tha Ta Vroume - We Will Never Find Kythera.