Out of Place

One weekend in November 2006 was one of those special weekends you keep in mind. It was a weekend spent in good company at the Mas of Noguera. "Mas" is a valencian word, valencian is a languaje we speak in the east of Spain and Mas means something like a rural house but not exactly. During that weekend I saw several times a happy group of cats, quiet, well regarded, well attended and keeping my way of thinking, in those moments came to my mind the introduction of foreign species....

It is sure that more than one people think that from the old times cats have been everywhere: but no, cats, as everything in this life, have had their own place and their own moment, up to the moment in which one mammal called "man" took it out from its original place.

Such a sweet image in the Mas could be translated into a fierce predator in the island of El Hierro in the Canary Islands or in an island-continent as Austrilia. In these places our friendly pussy-cat standed out in an environment which had never known its presence, imagine the catastrophe....

Homeless cats adpapted to live in the wild were about to die out the giant lizards in the island of El Hierro (Canary Islands). In Australia that type of cats went so far that authorities raised the possiblity of having a free-cat country in 2020. And why? It is very easy, a cat killed and kills about 1000 birds and small mammals a year. Similar problems have already been raised in some states of the USA.

Some day, to see things with more detail, I will tell you the story of the LightHouse Worker's Cat. I hope nobody thinks that I don't like cats at all, in fact I have one, neither I want people killing cats everywhere. The only thing I want is people having cats under control.