Triton II, near Drepano, is a lovely little campsite opposite a beach, run by an equally lovely lady called Christina. We’d read about it on Barry and Margaret’s website (magbaztravels.com), and they’ve been everywhere, so that made it easy. Here’s the beach – looks nice, right? Peaceful? Tranquil? Deserted?
Well the beach is, but the campsite …
At first we’re completely disarmed when two sweet little tabby kittens turn up and purr at us, gently rubbing our legs and being no trouble at all. They sit happily on our laps, and meander along with us when we walk on the beach. We feel their little ribs when we stroke them and promptly buy more cat food. We call them Sausage and Spot, and like having them around.
And so it starts.
After a few days of the tabbies, the fluffy gingers turn up: Thing 1 and Thing 2 began to camp on our doorstep. And several specimens (that after three months still each only have the name ‘Ugly Cat’) begin to settle underneath the van. By now, leaving the door open with the fly-screen closed is not an option. Sausage has discovered she can climb up the screen, and yank open the handle. Thing 1 thinks this is brilliant, and all the others begin to follow suit.
Still, not a massive problem, and so we start to put down our roots at Triton. We meet travellers Bob and Lynne (who also feed Sausage and Spot), and Janine and Arno, who live there permanently now, and have adopted three of the cats as their own (Charlie, Fritz, and Fritz’s sister).
Janine gives us the lowdown on the surrounding area – where to go for good, reasonably priced meals, where to shop, where the hardware stores were, the local sights etc. Really kind lady, makes beautiful jewellery (Esfera jewelry on Etsy). So when she asks us if we can feed her three cats, as she and Arno have to go to back to Holland for a fortnight, well of course we say yes.
And this is where the cats really play us.
They follow us every morning and evening as we go to feed Fritz and co., and try and muscle in. Persistent little buggers they are too. Janine has left a broom to swat them with, but it isn’t enough to keep them at bay once word has got around. No, the only thing that works is having Steve entice them all to one end of the site by rattling the dried food and feeding them there, while I sneak off to give Janine’s crew their meal.
Initially, there are the tabbies, the Things, and the Ugly Cats. Then a gorgeous, fluffy tortoiseshell with a bulbous tummy (that I wrongly assumed to be carrying kittens) arrives, that I called Mama Bear. She is a total sweetie, so we feed her too.
Bob and Lynne leave and we think they probably adopted Spot and Sausage, because we never see them again. Good for them. But the gap has been quickly filled by some ginger and white jobbies, and one in particular is very friendly and fairly devoted to Steve.
We’ve just watched the finals of Professional Masterchef and have been very impressed by one of the contestant’s tenacity: Louisa was a very young girl, with a great personality, who worked incredibly hard, and never allowed herself to be knocked off her goal of professional excellence. Steve calls his new follower Louisa-from-masterchef, because of her affectionate nature, combined with an extraordinary determination when it comes to food. No other cat gets a look in when she’s around.
Then we meet Velcro. This little tabby can lift the skin from your bones and the carpet from your floor when you try to pick him up to put him out. His ability to hold on is extraordinary. His masterstroke is making you give up trying to chuck him out because you prize your ‘surfaces’ too much. He quickly becomes Steve’s favourite, follows him to the loo and then shimmies under the door to be next to him.
There’s also a cross-eyed ginger we call Clarence (you have to be old to get that one), and one that sings when she eats – we call her Geri, or Ginger Spice. Tricolour is ginger, white and black, and a bit of a cow, and Bruiser is a fat-faced, big-footed bullyboy. He picks on the other cats, starts fights, attacks people (he once jumped onto Janine’s head and dug his claws into her scalp) and is generally a nuisance. He resembles a tabby version of Tom after Jerry has hit him in the face with a frying pan. At feeding time he has a tendency to lurk.
And now they’re all living on our roof. Or under the van, or sleeping on Nibbles soft-top, or our doorstep, or outdoor furniture, or tucked under the slide-out. We have to check all our outside lockers before closing them in case a cat has sneaked in when we aren’t looking. At night I’ll be woken by the thump of a cat landing on my bedroom roof. They also know exactly what time we feed Janine’s three, and they queue up outside each morning, and yell if we oversleep.
By the time we’ve settled in for Christmas we are regularly feeding sixteen cats twice a day, and Steve has discovered a place to buy cat food in bulk. And even though Janine and Arno are now home, Fritz and co., still like to come for ‘seconds’ at our place.
It’s quite usual to come back from the shopping to see three or four of them curled up on our coiled waste pipes, or occupying pride of place on our fold-up chairs. And then, as soon as they hear the car engine stop, they all come running and yelling for food, with others suddenly appearing from out of trees, or under hedges, or God knows where.
But then Doggo turns up, sometimes bringing his mate, and I think maybe the cats will disperse and we’ll get a little peace.
Not a chance. He appears every day for about three weeks, and just sits watching them. I think he’s aware that he’s vastly out-numbered, and that at least two of those cats are little shits.
By now Thing 1 thinks she owns us, which in a Mafia sense, she probably does. She and Thing 2, Louisa, Mama Bear and Velcro just climb into the van and make themselves comfortable whenever they want, and honestly, it’s easier to just let them be.
Luckily, by the time we leave Drepano, the season is beginning to open up again and more people are coming to stay. I see other people feeding the cats occasionally, and the numbers of regulars under our van begin to dwindle. The die-hards remain, of course, but by now they are fatter and healthy looking. Thing 1’s eye problem has cleared up after being repeatedly squirted with Optrex by Steve. Thing 2 has got brave enough to be stroked, just not on the head. Mama Bear and Thing 1 like to curl up on my lap and just be cats. Velcro and Louisa still follow Steve and watch him on the loo.
And although I have many happy (and normal) memories of our time in Drepano (about which, more next blog), it is the cats that I’ll always remember it for.
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P.s. Steve misses Velcro and I miss Mama Bear.
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