Loco por los gatos

My cats. How I miss my cats.

No soft and fuzzy friends to curl up with while reading Cervantes. No prickly tongue to lick the jamon y queso from my finger. No loving meow to greet me when I return home from a hard day on Las Ramblas. To Alan's horror, I have even chased down ferals in the park and pet them, scabby ears, sticky fur, and all. "Cat flu," Steve warned solemnly, and perhaps he has reason.

But, a fix is a fix, I say. And if that's not convincing, then out comes "I'm the Mother Theresa of cats" argument. Why should they not receive love just because they're covered with pussy scabs?

One night, from a darkened Gothic quarter corner, I looked on in jealousy as an old, hobbled matron with hunched back and gray frizzy hair pulled from her purse handful after handful of guts. Gleaming beneath the streetlights along this narrow stone corridor, these entrails lured alley cats from every dark corner. "Brava!" I wanted to cry, but she caught me staring at her and all but growled so I, full of sighing, walked away, content with the knowledge that the city was crawling with kitties.

Indeed, I see them everywhere I go. Here are just a few of the furry, not so furry, and not even feline surrogates I've managed to meet here in Spain and also in Morocco over the past month.

--JENN