It is now cold. What I would call summer changed to winter at some point between Friday and Saturday. On Friday it was a day to still have the air conditioner on, but apparently this would have been just to keep the room comfortable enough to pack up all the summer clothes and bring out the winter coats. Literally everyone has a jacket on and the sandals are history. Significant numbers have puffy coats and scarves, a good number have knee-length coats and boots, and I have spotted a pair of wool gloves on one. Needless the say, the tourists are now easy to spot. This one is going to head off soon to get some warmer wear. For the wrong reasons though of course. Have you ever felt that the world is mad, or at least is wearing the wrong clothes? Call me crazy but I still think it is perfectly fine to go about with just a light cardigan at 16 degrees. But anyways.
Went to Feria de Mataderos yesterday, about an hour's ride from home on the public bus. Best 25 cent ride I have had - both the ride itself and the event. If there is one place I would like to take you in all of Buenos Aires, it would be this Feria. The atmosphere was just perfect - very casual. Good booths, good food, good music, lots of people dancing around and just soaking it all up. Much fun.
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Cats, I think, do not remember much beyond the primal connections between home, friend, food, and feeding time. I was at the Recoleta Cemetery last week, sitting and sketching some of the crypt-houses (mausoleums?). A few cats begin to quietly congregate. This is not typical cat behaviour -- but I do not register this. Cats are everywhere and it was simply coincidental - the sun was out and they came out of the crypt for it. I am sure the rest down there wish they could too. But have no fear. Bill Richardson wrote a book called 'Waiting for Gertrude', following the extraordinary daily lives of cats, as the wandering, furry receptacles of the souls of those buried in the cemetary Pere Lachaise. So it must be the case here at Recoleta also. The un-finished battles for influence and gain continue, but so too does the morning ritual of feeding-time, the daily, UN-sanctioned cease-pounce for the provision of kibbles and milk.
They bring two large sports bags and set them on one of the concrete benches. A kind of glow starts to happen, deep from within cat. An energetic anticipation that you can see in their eyes, and the one paw that lifts up off the ground, in an otherwise externally motionless body. Not that they wish to speed up the process of unzipping the bags, putting on plastic gloves, putting down paper plates, or unscrewing the plastic jars of cat food. In the cemetery, one is surrounded by patience.
There are something like 50 stray cats here. The conditions are good, being a safe, quiet place that does not change much, though there is much territory to sniff. The owners keep to themselves and seem to sleep more than themselves, and food comes from above. There is perhaps a mythical, aging waiting list in a penthouse office downtown, for any prospective applicant who wishes to experrience life on the side of death. Presumably the typical alley cat would have difficulty accessing this. Or maybe one is automatically permitted entry when one's caretaker passed away. Which would truly be the luck of the draw. There are no more plots to be purchased, so one would have to be of some pedigree to start off with and be very friendly for an awfully long time, as well as have connections, of course, which some cats might obtain with careful diplomacy. But I am not sure that the latter is the case. For despite the care in the design and the materials of these mausoleums, ornamented with sculpture ordered by catalogue and imported from France, equipped with mechanical systems to keep the air fresh and topped off with domes of stained glass to allow light through for the gone and passed, there is not a single, purpose-built cat door in sight. The place however is still a heaven, or at least a haven, for this furry community. As long as wills and testaments do not provide sufficient funds for maintaining the last earthly home of the rich but departed, there will always be a crevice to crawl through, and a patch of grass to lie on.
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