Genghis hasn’t been my only involvement with the animals out here. Over the years we have had several feline visitors, semi feral cats, who while not belonging to anyone in particular, are fed by me and others out here. One particular young female has been a regular visitor for the past year or so. She is very tame and comes to us for company as well as food. She is usually outside in the mornings waiting for her breakfast, then she will snooze on the chairs for a time before wandering off on a hunting trip, returning late afternoon for more food and a bit of a social in the evening. She often spends the night on the patio outside contentedly purring when stroked or washing herself while she digests her meal. I have noticed that she talks to me, which is quite endearing and if I ask her a question or say something to her she will mew a reply.
I last left Cyprus in November 2017 and did not know if she would have moved on to another place for food during the winter but I was amazed to find that as we pulled up in the car she arrived immediately to greet us. She appeared to be in excellent health and took up where she had left off as if we hadn’t been away for 7 ½ months.
After being with us constantly for the first week she then disappeared for a day or so coming back for shorter periods at a time. I guessed she was splitting her time between us and one or two other people. I later found out she was also being fed by my friend down the road, as well as by another lady who lives out here permanently. In fact my friend had taken her to be spayed and had also taken her to the vet when she suffered a bad injury.
Another more nervous tabby and white cat started appearing while the first cat was at my friend’s and we found this quite amusing as this little one had also been fed by my friend. We then started WhatsApping each other photos of which cat was at which location for its food and having a good laugh about it and the fact that we were turning into crazy cat women with hundreds of cats.
Not only were the cats playing us off against each other as food suppliers and favouring us with their presence on different days, but we were both amazed to have a fox visit us. I had seen a fox in the garden on one occasion last October and was very surprised that it was able to survive in this kind of climate. A darker, smaller creature, more of a brown shade than the red foxes back in the UK, it was very lithe and agile but also quite surprisingly tame and I was able to get relatively close with the food I put down for it. My friend said it had even been in her house and sat on her sofa and her husband joked that all it needed was the remote control for the TV.