Living the Life of Cats and a Paros Island Update
Parikia, Paros Island, Greece, March 24th, 2020
Salaroche


First some Paros Island update: Things are getting a bit more serious by the day around here in Greece. Sunday night we all got an alarm message telling us that from 06:00 am Monday morning there would be a curfew requiring everyone to let the local authorities know where we are going and why, and we would all be required to get an approval message for our outing, otherwise, we could be liable to a 180 € fine.

The authorities also sent us an SMS listing the different codes necessary to detail the reasons for our going out, which looks to me like a simple, smart way to go about this situation. All we need to do is send a text message to a particular number stating the code and our name, and a few seconds later we get a response authorizing us. I needed the help of a Greek young lady to do the whole operation, but I did it and was able to safely go shopping for food, fruit and other similar things (nobody stopped me to check my approval message)

I took the usual peripheric road to go to the supermarket and to my favorite take-out restaurant and saw some gardeners trimming some trees, some workers cleaning a yard, and some others loading and downloading stuff on and from trucks, which to me didn’t seem like essential things to do, but who knows. The regular traffic was thinner than usual, but there were still some cars going by, some of them with drivers wearing masks.

As the Greek people themselves say, Greeks do not care much about rules and regulations. They have their customs, traditions and social habits and anything that may impinge on them is not heeded or followed in a spontaneous manner. It takes time and some authority intervention to make the Greeks abide by any new rules, even rules that may be meant to safeguard their own personal safety.

In that way, their culture is similar enough to that of the Italians and the Spaniards but, somehow, the Greek have managed to keep the number of their contaminated brethren relatively low, at 624, and an equally relatively low number of related deaths at 16 (as of March 23 at 03:42 PM ET)

But life keeps chugging along in spite of anything that may happen to us humans, and our fellow Terranauts of the animal and the plant realms keep living their lives as if none of the problems that affect us concerns them. Or at least that is the way it seems to most of us.

My neighbors the cats, for example, don’t seem to give a single “miaou” about the restrictive circumstances that surround me. They just keep coming around my door twice a day at the customary meal times demanding their habitual treats. And I, as the well-trained cat-butler that I have become, fulfill their wishes each and every time.

Tricky, witchy little beings cats are. They have their own natural way of seducing incautious, unwary guys like me and, once they have you in their pockets, they have their own mischievous ways to make sure you stay in there.

Take Groucho for example, he has a way of sitting there in his usual “what… me worry?” attitude, making full theatrical use of his wide moustache, openly projecting his multiple personalities on whoever happens to be in his radius of influence.

In the morning he may give you his charming Clark Gable look (see “It Happened One Night”, with Claudette Colbert), but by noon he may have already adopted his Salvador Dalí outlandish stance. After lunch, once he is fully satisfied with the salmon dish you gave him, he may decide to impersonate a Mexican Bandit just to show you that, once more, he got away with a free lunch from you (ha, ha).

As night falls, however, he may assume his Groucho looks and become the jester once again, thereby enticing you to serve him dinner one more time, which you (rather I) very obediently do. And so the story goes.

Mimi, on the other hand, has a different set of tactics in her toolbox. First, she played the meek, shy, harmless, defenseless cute little feline girl. So, I protected her from the mean, dominant Groucho that was always trying to keep her away from my patio and was always trying to steal her food.

As the days went by and Mimi’s confidence began to grow, however, Groucho’s aggressiveness began to wane and the social roles began to change. Mimi no longer ran away when Groucho threatened to take her food away. She stood her ground and raised one of her paws in a defensive manner, thereby making Groucho desist in his abusive behavior. At a certain point, I could see that Mimi’s social status was almost at a par with that of Groucho.

Things kept going rather harmoniously for a while until one sunny day I saw Mimi stretched wide on the ground, purring with delight like a feline Cleopatra in full display of her charms, while Groucho just sat by contemplating the scene with nothing but resignation from his part.

And, lo and behold. One night, when dinner was served, it was Mimi who was miaouing Groucho away as she wished. Mimi had climbed to the top of the food chain. As a result, since a few days ago, Mimi is now the new boss. How did that happen? Well, maybe deep inside Mimi was always more of an alpha female than Groucho was an alpha male, so she naturally became the boss.

In the following days, as I repeatedly saw Mimi’s new dominant behavior, I thought of the last two lines in the song “We Won’t Get Fooled Again”, written by Peter Townshend and sang by Roger Daltrey, both of the famous English group “The Who”, and those two lines go like this: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”.

But then I began to notice some particularities in Mimi’s style of dominance. While Groucho used to concentrate on eating his own food, not minding much whether other cats approached the perimeters of his territory, Mimi is always vigilant and ready to show her paws to any approaching feline. She has even chased some newcomers away a couple of times.

The Who’s song, therefore, would not exactly apply to the feline situation I am describing, as the behavior of Mimi the boss is not the same as that of Groucho the ex-boss. Mimi is much more territorial and can often be much more aggressive towards others than Groucho ever was when he was king. To fit this feline story, therefore, the words of The Who’s song would have to be changed to: “Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss”.

But not all the other cats are afraid of Mimi for good. Yes, they initially run away when she chases them, but some of them return, particularly two of them: Quincy and Whitey. Quincy is a teenager and Whitey looks much older than he probably is, as he wears a permanent white goatee on his serene, beautiful feline face.

To feed either Quincy or Whitey, however, I have to keep the other two from getting any closer to them, otherwise they would chase the latecomers away and eat their food. And there is not much else I can do about it, because such is life in the realm of my neighbors the cats.

For my part, I am growing a bit concerned that, by osmosis and because of the sheer habit of observing and interacting with cats that I have acquired, I may be absorbing some of their traits myself. You know how it is. The more you are exposed to someone or something, particularly if in being exposed you develope some admiration for them, the more you may naturally tend to emulate them.

My concern, therefore, is that one morning I might wake up to find that I have metamorphosed into a cat. I don’t know whether such existence would be more worth living than the one I am living right now, but if you ever read a commentary from me that only contains cat pawprints, it would probably mean that, for better or worse, my metamorphosing has been entirely completed.

Just in case, here below you can find pictures of Groucho and Mimi, along with a chart that may be helpful when interacting with our feline friends. I may send photos of Quincy and Whitey as the opportunity arises.

…and the beat goes on…

Please take good care of yourselves.

Salaroche

Groucho the Cat, a.k.a. Dalí or "The Mexican Bandit"

Mimi-Cleopatra