The Great Sicilian Cat Rescue (23 page)

He wrote: ‘I need to know with certainty the day in which Sadie wishes to come here. She will have to stay for several days to organise the documents because she has to go to the Veterinary Office in Taormina to sign them. I will do my best to make it all as easy as possible. The cat is very well, eating and is much more calm now that she has been neutered. Let me know when Sadie plans to come.’

A day or so later, he wrote: ‘She is an angel, a very special cat who deserves a special home.’

This was exactly what Sadie was preparing – she told me she was building a ramp so the cat could easily access the stairs!

‘Eddie is now quite amused by the whole scenario and is helping me make arrangements. I can finance her coming here and have started raising considerable funds. I work for a children’s charity so that comes as second nature. I have some
big sponsors in my contacts, so who knows? I want to look after the Gatta Trovatella!’

And I wanted to help her but I was still concerned about a blind cat travelling such a distance. I remembered Elke telling me about the plane and train journeys she made with her four cats. They had always travelled with her in the cabin when she went from Sicily to Rome and also to Germany. I knew the reassurance my cat Sheba needed on journeys and was comforted that Sadie would be by her side. Then I discovered, once again, British rules were different: animals had to travel as live cargo. There were no exceptions for blind cats like Katarina. Oh dear, how would she cope with that? Would she be traumatised by the noise and movement? Oscar also expressed his concerns. This was becoming more stressful by the day.

Sadie was also encountering difficulties. She wrote: ‘I’m really struggling to find an airline that will take the cat. Alitalia do NOT bring animals into the UK anymore and BA has a strict policy which does not permit animals in the cabin. It will cost several hundred to book her in cargo. This airline seems to fly directly to London, which is one saving grace. Airlines are generally useless, have no info online and are unhelpful.’

We were moving through August, Katarina had been with Oscar for almost a month. She was thriving on all the care and attention he was giving her but she couldn’t stay there forever. Sadie continued to struggle with the logistics of getting the little feline into the UK. I was still concerned about her having to travel as live cargo and so I consulted Elke.

‘It does seem so complicated compared with the rest of Europe,’ she agreed. ‘And I understand Sadie being daunted by all this paperwork. Tell her to call me the moment she arrives in Taormina and I’ll go with her to the Veterinary Office and translate so that she can complete the documents.’

One afternoon Elke called on Oscar and the two of them got on like a house on fire.

‘La Manna is a lovely person and remember Sicilians are very accustomed to problems. I went ice-cream eating with him today and we had lots of laughs.’

Meanwhile, Sadie remained concerned. She had been double-checking the UK regulations for a pet passport and wanted to be certain everything was in place: ‘I don’t want to be turned back at the border or, worse, for Kat to have to go into quarantine. The microchip has to be placed before the anti-rabies vaccination. I am also concerned that Oscar hasn’t factored in the 21-day waiting period.’

I was now in conflict. On the one hand, I wanted this transfer to go smoothly and without hitch. On the other, I disliked having to continually bother Oscar, who was still on holiday. I kept on apologising to him.

Things suddenly came to a head when Sadie said she had to confirm flights by nine o’clock that Thursday evening. It was now crucial, she said, to have all her queries clearly answered. I waited for Oscar to reply.
It must be a wonderfully sunny day in Sicily
, I told myself.
Who knew, maybe he was on the beach!
However, at four that afternoon, I was able to text Sadie that all was in place.

I heard nothing over that Bank Holiday weekend but I had my own concerns, trying to make important appointments
in France, where I was shortly to present my new novel. I just presumed all had gone to plan and wondered when Sadie would go to the surgery to be reunited with Katarina.

Then I heard that Sadie, faced with all these difficulties, had been trying to find another option: ‘This is not a simple process of me coming over. I would have to fly over (based on when her 21-day period is over), stay in Taormina as I can’t drive, collect and sign documents from somewhere, travel to Giardini Naxos on public transport, collect the cat and get a train/bus to Catania, fly to Rome with her, then transfer her to another flight in cargo.’

That’s when the bureaucratic nightmare to bring her to the UK began: ‘Sicily it seems has its own way of operating, and there are various nonsensical hoops that make the process extremely costly and slow. The language barrier was also very taxing. However, with the help of Catsnip, locals in Sicily, the vet and an agency in Rome, Kat eventually arrived at our home in London… that’s cutting a very long story short and eclipsing six weeks of constant organisation and changes in the plan, as new rules and blockades became apparent. At one point it seemed that the only way to get the cat to the airport for 7am, for the only flight that would accept her (a flight which was not even going to London), would be for an elderly Sicilian removal van driver to be conscripted into the plan,’ explained Sadie.

It was certainly complex and she had decided that it would be simpler to use the specialist agency Relocat.

‘They can do everything, and advise Oscar, which seems to make more sense than me trying to do this, via you,’ said Sadie. ‘The plan is that Kat will need to be taken to Catania
airport, flown to Rome, stay over a night there, then fly to London the following day!! It is the only way. I hope it will not be too traumatic for her. She will have a strange few hours in transport, but will then be home, and safe. The whole experience is very strange for her, the vets, transport, a new home, a dog, etc. But she is a very young cat, who seems robust enough to cope. After her travels here, she will not be uprooted again, and will have a luxurious life!’

Her other life options were dire.

At this point another player in this drama came on the scene. Mark contacted me from the Rome agency, telling me he would take care of all arrangements from drop-off at Catania airport to delivery to Sadie’s London home.

He said: ‘I don’t think there’s any sense in Sadie (who doesn’t speak Italian) coming down merely to rent a car/cab and drive for forty minutes from Taormina to Catania. I am arranging two flights, AZ 1710 and BA 547. Live animals must travel as AVI Manifest Cargo to the UK under the Pet Travel Scheme. I won’t be able to book flights until I have copies of pet passport pages.’

In Taormina, Elke was standing by:

After a long search Elke finally found the right transportation basket, which conformed to both airlines’ requirements, and was awaiting news from Mark on the date of the flights.

It was now September and I was standing in the magnificent gardens of Claude Monet in Giverny, Normandy when Sadie’s triumphant email arrived:

Over the following weeks, Sadie kept me posted: ‘Katarina is very cuddly and is quite playful. She hunts and plays based on movement and sound – I think that she is a very clever cat. She is quite fearless.’

A day or so later, the photographs arrived. They showed an adorable and contented Katarina and brought tears to my eyes.

Sadie’s most recent email told me: ‘She is now a healthy, happy eighteen-month-old cat, who not only circumnavigates around our home with ease, but who is a talented escape
artist and climber. She enjoys the garden and was house-trained from day one. Her eating habits are questionable, and we have to compete with her when opening cupboards, or the fridge. The dog and she have become a tag-team for stealing food. She is very skilled at this, much to the dog’s delight. She licks everyone that comes into the house to visit, and occasionally has to be removed from our guests’ laps after they have endured her grooming them for ten minutes. She particularly likes beards. As we speak she is lying on her back, in a disused brown cardboard box by the Christmas tree. She has a full belly and a smile on her face. That pretty much sums up her new life here.’

Elke commented: ‘I am very happy to know that the cat is in good hands. Thinking about the whole thing now, I have some comments to say: Now that I know how the transport and papers for the UK for animals work, I would probably do it again, because in the beginning nobody knew how different everything is to the UK in contrast with other European countries. I would recommend Catsnip pass on this information and give the appropriate addresses – for example, Mark’s in Rome – so that people know what they have to do. He knows every rule of every country for import and export of animals, and was a huge help for me. With the right information it is not too difficult to get things done but it takes some time and patience.’

And money! Sadie ended up with a £3,000 bill. As she said: ‘It’s such a shame that there is not a revised/alternative way to bring rescue animals to other parts of Europe. It actually disgusts me that all the money I have paid has gone to BA, rather than as a donation to Oscar or a cat rescue
organisation in Sicily. I’m imagining that £3,000 would have paid for quite a few cats to be treated/spayed. Morally, in such circumstances as this, I feel that it’s abhorrent to make fees so high. No wonder no one is willing to go through this. I would have been so much happier if I knew that airlines/organisations would waive some of their fees (VAT at least) to donate it so that the issue in Sicily could be addressed. There are so many people who would be willing to help if the cost wasn’t so vast. It’s just been so ridiculous that I’m furious that this system hasn’t been changed. Nothing is given towards raising awareness in Sicily or towards rescue organisations.’

I thoroughly agree, Sadie, but rejoice that there are people like you and Eddie who care.

A
nother year has passed and autumn has come round again. Once again I am back in Sicily.

The first chestnuts of the season, their shiny, charred coats splitting to reveal the creamy coloured meat within. Prosecco in crystal, fluted glasses, a vase of perfect pink roses… It looks like a still life painting. We are in Umberto Martorana’s apartment at the end of the Corso. He has invited me for a drink and to talk about the Taormina of once upon a time.

The building is unremarkable from the outside; it does not prepare you for the gem within. Every aspect is carefully chosen and exquisite, from the Sicilian enamels in his bedroom to the alabaster busts against the walls, the pictures in his elegant living room. Beautiful carpets lie on the polished wood floors – a proper setting for such a cultivated man. He paints. His pictures are deceptively simple: two countrywomen against a frieze of olive trees, a shrine to the Madonna crowded with simple offerings, water reflecting the
multicolours of a fishing boat – quintessentially Sicilian. He travels. From the books precisely placed around this room I gather he is also an extensive reader.

He has promised to show me his photograph albums, the images of lords and ladies, actors and writers, socialites – memories of another, more elegant Taormina, a time of fancy dress parties and dinners, cocktails at expat villas and visiting yachts.

Those were the disappearing years of a belle epoque that reigned at the end of the nineteenth, beginning of the twentieth centuries: an idyllic time.

It was at the Hotel Vittorio in 1891 Oscar Wilde took a room. Thirty-seven years old, he had left his wife to embrace his true sexuality, which would lead to imprisonment and forced labour. The literary genius would be ostracised and live out his last miserable years in Paris.

In those early years of the twentieth century, the best touring companies in Sicily played spectacles and operettas at the Greek theatre. The cabarets had a fatal influence on the nobility from Catania who, falling for a pair of lovely legs, gambled their marriages and inheritances. Some were reduced by their impossible and violent passion to commit suicide in a hotel room and often, to save Taormina’s face, they were hurriedly dispatched.

Closing the albums, I sign Umberto’s famous visitors book. I sip my Prosecco and nibble those first chestnuts of autumn. They seem somehow significant: mature fruit but containing spring and summer. I feel I have made a long journey and now come ‘home’ as I sit in Umberto’s peaceful apartment, the sounds of the Corso far away. It is as if, this evening, all
the long negotiations with Sicily have ended and we have reached a kind of truce, even though it can never be more than an uneasy one. A balance has been restored and, once again, I can see not only the shadows but the sunshine as well.

In the morning I go down to Isola Bella and gaze at that view as if I cannot take it in enough. I gaze and gaze. Light permeates everything, piercing the heat haze that shrouds the bay, the spume that fans out behind a boat. It illuminates another pagan world, tranquil and joyful. It is what one yearns for during those grey days in Northern Europe, to be made alive again by the light. I can understand how it is that Emilio paints and paints this scene yet again. There is another quality about Sicily, which he once described to me. He related how he took an Englishman – a man who was not accustomed to expressing his feelings – to stand at the top of Isola Bella.

‘He was enchanted and turned to me and said, “You can touch the air.”’

As I wander over the isthmus and back, I think of all those times when leaving the place, this small island in the Mediterranean, I would pause and gaze down Isola Bella, committing it to my memory. Isola Bella has been a recurring theme in my life in Sicily as it has Elke’s.

That September day, she was in reminiscent mood: ‘My first footsteps into Sicily were in the town of Messina. My future husband, Marquis Emilio Bosurgi, took me from Rome to Messina in a
wagon lit
sleeping car – a long trip from Rome to Sicily at that time. When we arrived at the train station of Messina I was extremely disappointed. I had imagined the island of Sicily similar to the Caribbean with sandy beaches, palm trees and hot weather. Nothing like that:
Messina was ugly, the weather grey and cold (February) and no Hula-Hula girls, no white sand beaches with palm trees.

‘But Emilio said: “Wait and see when we get to Taormina, everything will be different.” We took his Alfa-Romeo sports car to Taormina, parked on the road in front of a little island called Isola Bella. To get to it we had to climb down a steep staircase to a stony beach, walk along it until we reached the narrowest distance between land and island. Emilio told me to put on long rubber boots and to follow him slowly, walking through rather high water and waves. But I did not put my feet firmly enough on the ground and the next big wave just knocked me over. Here I was in the icy-cold water, Emilio grabbed me by my hair and I got back on my feet. Thank God I had a suitcase with dry clothes, which was carried by a servant on his head, so it would not get wet!

‘Here we were on this mysterious little island. I was soaking wet and Emilio was having the largest laugh about my first meeting with the Sicilian sea. There was a nice chimney in the house on top of the island and I changed my clothes and dried the wet stuff at the nice cosy fire. We had good Sicilian wine and Emilio cooked a huge steak.

‘Next morning: what a surprise, no more strong wind, no more heavy sea, but the most beautiful sunshine instead, and the flat sea had a violet-blue colour. What a change from yesterday! It was a breathtakingly beautiful atmosphere. Unfortunately I had to go back to work in Germany, but on my next vacation in summer I was back in Taormina and after a year I gave up my job and moved to Sicily. From then on most of the time I spent on Isola Bella, taking care of Emilio’s customers and friends, showing them the island and inviting them for lunch.

‘Slowly, Emilio constructed many rooms on the island, one for each member of the family. Every room had a bathroom, a chimney and a little corner to boil tea or coffee. Many times I was angry because he spent all his free time with his workers constructing new places and studying a method so as not to ruin the original look of the island. Everything was made to look like little caves, with the walls carefully covered with the natural rocks of the island. The result was to create a unique work of art from nature.

‘It was the happiest time of my life,’ she continued. ‘We lived a wonderful twenty years, and really loved it, doing a big favour to the town of Taormina. Then it was requisitioned and we had to leave this corner of paradise. It fell into dilapidation.’

Maybe one day Isola Bella will return to its original beauty. Nevertheless, it will never forget those splendid years when all those important personages walked on her in admiration.

Coming from different backgrounds, though both lovers of this beautiful island, somehow Elke and I were brought together by our love of cats and our desire to give them happier lives. But our affection for Sicily is tempered by the fight to rescue its felines; there is still a long way to go.

I think of those words of D.H. Lawrence as he and Frieda prepared to leave Taormina in 1923. They sat with their luggage packed up, ready to leave Villa Fontana Vecchia.

‘My heart is trembling with pain – the going away from home and the people and Sicily. Perhaps Frieda is right and we shall return to our Fontana. I don’t say no. I don’t say anything for certain. Today I go – tomorrow I return. So things go.’

So things go. I will return.