Costa Rican Beach Cat

"Hello again, everyone!  Mom stifled me for a week.  She took off on vacation to Costa Rica.  That meant that not only would the boys and I need to be alone for a week, but it also meant that I had no blog secretary.  Thus, no blog posts for a whole week!  Just for that, I'm not going to tell mom about all the fun we had with our cat sitter Carlos.  I'm not going to tell her that even though we missed her, we enjoyed a week of freedom with nobody telling us what we couldn't do!


When mom came home, she told us that she met a cat on the beach in Costa Rica.  At first I was a little jealous, but then I grew to pity this poor little guy.  Mom said that he was young and very skinny (she could see his ribs) and had some open wounds, possibly from fighting, or just from living in the wild.  Even though the bartender at the beach bar told her that this cat had a home, mom wasn't really sure about that.  How could anyone have a cat and take such poor care of him?  There was one thing that may indicate that he does have a home: mom said he was a real sweetheart around her and the other humans she was hanging out with.  So, he knew how to give and receive love.  And his affection may have been entirely genuine, or it was a strategy to get some of mom's lunch away from her.  She gave him a small bite of bread, and when he gobbled it up without chewing, she have him a whole slice.  We cats don't usually eat bread (nothing against it, but it's not meat), so if this guy was chowing down on the bread, you know he had to be hungry.  Mom soaked a second slice of bread in cheese sauce from her pasta, and the cat ate that up too.  Mom said she felt so sorry for this guy, but other than giving him some hearty food, she couldn't do much else.  After a while, he left.

Mom hopes, and I hope too, that this little cat really did have a home and that his people will treat his wounds and feed him better, but we're not so sure.  Mom said she saw a lot of cats in Costa Rica, and all of them were thin.  Some of them clearly did have homes, but just weren't as fat as us spoiled American cats.  Others were strays, and mom's heart went out to them as she thought about me and my brothers here at home, and how much she missed us.  There were lots of dogs in Costa Rica too, including on the beach, mom said.  Again, they were thinner than American dogs, and some appeared to be strays.  It was often hard for mom to tell the strays from the dogs with homes, because there didn't seem to be any kind of leash laws, and many dogs ran around without collars.  There were good dog sightings, mom said, like the happy dogs playing near the surf, and the ones running on the path with their humans.  But mom's experience with cats and dogs in Costa Rica was overwhelmingly sad.  She wished the animals were better cared for, but with many people just making ends meet, animals were not their top priority.  Stories like these remind me how lucky Zorro, Willie, Grayson and I really are.  We have a happy home with lots of love, food, toys, and comfortable places to sleep, and we get good veterinary care.  I may complain about my brothers sometimes, and I may seem aloof as if I don't care about things, but I do, and I'm proud to be my mom's Siamese girl."