A change in our cat's hunting habits has left us puzzled Almost four years ago, on a dark though not stormy night, as Stew, Félix and I were coming back from town, we noticed two small fur balls tentatively walking along, one on each side of the road. We stopped, Félix got off and promptly …
Stew and I believe gray mice are endearing. And apparently so did The Walt Disney Company, who's made billions off Mickey and Minnie, and also Remy, the protagonist of Disney•Pixar's 2007 animated feature "Ratatouille," about an irresistibly charming Parisian rat who aspires to become a chef. A lot of people are unpersuaded by the charm of …
This won't come as news to anyone who lives in San Miguel, but it's been hot, borderline miserable here for the past two weeks. I don't care if it's hotter in Houston or New Orleans. I live here, not there.All winter we had to listen to people in Chicago, New York and Boston moaning about …
For the past nine or ten years Stew and I have volunteered two weekends to work at a spay-and-neuter clinic sponsored by Amigos de Animales, a local not-for-profit funded almost entirely by the expat community of San Miguel, with additional support from the Guanajuato State Health Department.Our jobs are to sit by a table at …
When he carefully laid Paco on the stainless steel examination table, Dr. Vázquez, almost in a whisper, said, "This is very difficult."I don't know if he meant for himself, us, or the emaciated cat we had brought in to be euthanized. In the end it was awfully hard for everyone.No one can accuse this gentle …
At San Miguel's spay-and-neuter campaignsyou can find some peculiar monikersAfter volunteering for spay-and-neuter campaigns or "blitzes" for dogs and cats in San Miguel for eight or nine years, Stew and I have inherited the weigh-in station as our permanent post. After registration, each animal has to be weighed so that the vets down the line …
Some time ago, while Stew was lying in bed trying to read, our sixteen-year-old cat Paco sat on his chest to demand his nightly dose of head-rubbing and general coochee-coochee. Paco doesn't quit easily: He'll purr, meow, shove his head against whatever you're reading, climb on your head if all else fails. No point in …
Continue reading When is it time to say goodbye to my old cat?
Until this year, our two cats, Paco, 16, and Fifo, 12, did a credible job of keeping wild critters, particularly mice and rats, out of the house.This week, though, we discovered they'd surrendered their hunting badges. It may be Paco's old age or Fifo increasing rotundity and laziness, but when we spotted a small mouse …
Does our cat suffer from "whisker fatigue"?Is that more interesting than politics? With America as troubled as she is, riven by political intrigue and class warfare, and my brain's capacity for bad news almost at the limit, my attention has turned lately to more recondite items in the daily newscycle.For example, did you catch the June …
Dogs and cats, of all sizes, ages and stripes, keep coming, in cardboard boxes or repurposed birdcages, at the end of frayed ropes, or wrapped in blankets in the arms of their owners. Freaked-out cats howl while some chihuahuas, bug-eyed and trembling, appear to be on the verge of an anxiety attack. For the return …
El Rancho Santa Clara 