83. Catty Proverbs

“I don’t know why he said that to you,” Mr. Panza said to me when I showed him my cat. “But the case is there is a Spanish proverb that says you mustn’t look for three feet on a cat because it has four paws. It means one mustn’t go looking for what doesn’t exist because you could cause trouble trying to find it.”

“My cat does have three feet,” I said. “As you can see.”

Sancho nodded.

“He’s a very stange cat,” he said. “But nevertheless a cat, I think. I can’t think of anything he looks more like.”

He was a very strange cat. He had three legs, placed more like a person’s than a cat’s. They ended in pink feet, not paws. And he had two paws that were almost like hands. He could, however, turn his nails into claws if he had to defend himself. His face was larger and broader than the usual cat’s. His grey fur was much darker, almost black around his eyes so he looked like he was wearing spectacles. He had dark spots on the rest of his fur too.And he could change sizes. Most of the time, he liked to be small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. He enjoyed being carried.     

Sancho and I were standing next to a well close to the Roman ghost Nauta’s villa. Sancho was there because he liked to trade proverbs, saws and sayings with Nauta’s pet cats. I was there because I wanted to introduce my cat to Nauta’s.

Nauta and Don Alonso came out of the villa. Two cats trailed cautiously behind them.

                                                                  

“My silky, slinky black cat is called Cato,” said Nauta. 

“And my plump and friendly orange cat is Catullus.”

He bent a little to pat my cat.

“What do you call your cat?” he asked.

  

“Gatocatcha,” I said proudly.

“That,” said Don Alonso, who had read that great Indian classic, The Mahabharata, “is the name of an elephant. And this is a very small cat. Still, it’s an ingenious name.”

And he smiled at me approvingly. I knew that he, if anyone, would appreciate my choice of a name.

“If  Gatocatcha wants to be friends with my cats, he’d better be interested in maxims, sayings, saws and proverbs,” said Nauta. “They meet with friends here at the well on certain days to exchange new ones. Today’s subject is best friends.”

“Summer is the best friend of poor people,” said Gatocatcha. He was a very clever cat and I knew he would have no problem exchanging proverbs or anything similar.

“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” meowed Catullus in a velvety voice, “or so my girlfriend says.”

He had orange fur with a few white stripes and liked to wear colurful bowties.His whiskers were very long, and he was quite a dandy. 

                                                        

“Fidite Nemini,” said Augustus Caesar. 

There was a statue of him next to the well. His ghost always dropped by to animate it whenever the cats sat by the well to exchange proverbs. Augustus liked them even more than the cats did. “You mustn’t trust anybody. Don’t I know that!” he said.

“A man’s best friend is his dog,” I pitched in, and immediately regretted having mentioned this animal.

Darkly elegant, sober Cato looked me straight in the eyes and said, “A boy’s best friend is his mother?”

That made me nervous. But it is still soon to say why. 

"Sit pretty."