Nine Lives

Cats are said to have nine lives. They are resilient creatures who stroll about commanding, not asking for subsistence, with their wholly independent air. They are quite amazing enviable survivors who seem to carry on in spite of all kinds of outside aberrations. Feral cats are a prime example. Their plight is not enviable but their ability to maintain an existence under the most difficult conditions is admirable in many ways. In travels, I have witnessed in all countries, slinking hoards of these beautiful animals living everywhere and anywhere as means of endurance. They go about in the world's ancient wonders constructed by brilliant engineers of their time, places of wood, marble and concrete, their elegant animal lines moving silently through pillars and arched domes, asking nothing, but receiving with grace, whatever sustenance opportunity comes their way. Few I have witnessed begged for food or shelter but warily accepted gifts while repaying nothing but their elegant presence. Rich tourists passing shrines of present-day  travels will stop amid the historical human wonders of architecture and watch with as much interest as they paid to see hundreds of years old buildings, a clutch of kittens whose wise mother gathers them there to attract attention. She gleans the tossed bits of food or small donations of money to those who maintain  the feline population, knowing that it is her only way of making a living. The animals of these sites, pay back by reducing the vermin population. In the great temples, the pyramids, the squares, the waterways, there are cats. Cats of all colours, shapes and sizes. Cats are always cats and unlike some other animals, stick with their own breed. There are cats on roofs, down alleys, up towers, in tunnels and in places you would not think to go. Cats reside, with permission, often reluctant, where you and I cannot, in the world's greatest and most historical venues. They live on less amicable pests who also inhabit places that people pay large amounts of cash merely to pass through. These are cats' homes and they earn them. There are those who see that cats remain living in our centuries-old icons of history. Other than catching rats and mice, cats add an artistic, living, moving ambience  to things long dead. They slide in and out of balustrades, down marble halls, into niches and through doorways adding their lovely lines and fierce independent aura to add contrast and enhance a warmth to places long dead. They are unwitting partners of their human overseers, ignoring their often unappreciative humans of their presence. Cats will go on long after we leave. Vive les chats!