Chiaro and Milly

We now have two animals. “Chiaro” the cat was in fact a sitting tenant when we arrived. Chiaro originally belonged to a Calabrian family, who rented our house until a couple of years before we bought it, and Chiaro had somehow stayed, fed occasionally on pasta by Erminia, who like so many country people has a love hate relationship with domestic pets, alternately making a fuss of Chiaro then chasing him with a broom. When we arrived and started giving him real cat food he decided to move back to our house pretty much full time, although the rule is he is not allowed inside. Chiaro is a big tomcat and a kind of sandy colour which matches the stonework of the house. I guess he is about five or six and this spring he had trouble coming to terms with the fact that he may no longer be the toughest cat on the block. Every night we would hear blood curdling yowlings and growlings and other signs of feline mayhem and in the morning Chiaro would come limping for his food, bloody and with bits of ear and leg missing. I really thought he wasn’t going to see the summer, but somehow he pulled through and most of his scars have more or less healed.

 In June Sue was working in her vegetable garden when a small sandy coloured terrier like creature with unfeasibly large ears padded up to her and started to make friends. Sue says that she thought the dog belonged to one of our neighbours so she made friends with it, though I am not entirely sure I believe her. It was, of course, a stray and on closer inspection covered in ticks and quite weak. I don’t have a problem with wild dogs, but I do hate to see dogs that have obviously been domesticated, then cast loose to fend for themselves. Anyway we gave it some food and a tick collar and got our friends Claude and Jane to feed it while we were away in the UK for a week in early July. It was still here when we returned so we took it to the vets where we found out that “it” was a bitch of about two years of age, so we had her inoculated and “done”. She is now an intensely loyal and reasonably happy and well-balanced dog who I must admit to enjoy having around. She, like Chiaro, also matches the stonework. She also looks exactly like almost every other dog in this part of Puglia. A long time ago a corgi must have bred with a dingo with enormous ears and produced a virulent local strain of mongrel.