TACA, THE FLYING CAT

TACA

The other day, a reader of the blog wrote a comment on my post Indifference. He said: I feel certain envy, because I lost, some years ago, two precious cats because they couldn’t fly and I promised that I would not have another one till they knew how to use a parachute, so ... Ouch! Turns out that I do have a flying cat: Taca.

The first cats we had in this apartment, first Nosé (Idon’tknow, yes that was its name) and, later on, Benito were walking on the ledge at their whim, especially Nose in tours that left us out of breath. Then Canela (Cinnamon) , the white Persian, arrived. She was able to perch by the window following the family tradition. I thought that all cats had a special instinct and that was virtually impossible for then to fall. When Canela was a little older, we paired her with a handsome, high-pedigree Persian cat, and three precious kittens were born. I even made a Vanguardia Magazine cover with them and my daughter Andrea.

After several stories, which are beside the point, we kept one of the gray kittens named Taca (spot in Catalan). But it seems that Taca did not inherited the genes from her mother but his father’s, who probably never saw an open window in his life or, in spite of his aristocratic lineage, was a bit silly. Taca was only a few months old and during a warm summer night, in which all the windows were open, someone called us from the street to warn that a badly injured kitten was lying on the street and asked if we were the owners. It was Taca and I had to take her to a veterinary clinic, where she was treated, during one week, between life and death. She was saved, although she had lost one of her seven lives. After a few months, at dusk, I went to the terrace and saw a gray shadow running at full speed by the cornice and precipitating under vacuum. This time she had more luck, or maybe she was learning to fly; I think a dense plant, that was on the second floor, cushioned her fall. After half an hour searching her on the street, we found her very frightened but apparently unharmed. She kept herself hidden somewhere at home, two days without eating, but afterwards everything was fine. She had only five lives left. She lost the fifth one when while fighting with her mother jumped into the vacuum, this time in the backyard, but rebounded in the wires tend clothes that stopped the coup. Or perhaps she already knew about flying. She hid in the house of a neighbour, who had left his grating window open, and had gone on vacation. I could not find her until two days after when I heard her meowing in the courtyard.

No, Taca hasn’t lost more lives since then neither has she learned to fly. But what she knows now, it is been already eight years since the courtyard fall, is to walk without any fear (or fall) on the cornice. I read somewhere that cats have no memory. Surely, now that so much has been said of Darwin, the evolution law will act on my cat and on their offspring that shall inherit the ability to avoid falling from heights. At least I hope so. In the photos you can see that Taca has an innate tendency to perch in high places.

CANELA Y TACA . MOTHER AND DAUGHTER