Another reason to love SU… I happened upon this cat-tacular place when I was wandering through Rome. The cats lounging on the ancient ruins are what attracted my attention. I spent about an hour trying to acquiesce to the very rough-looking street cats, who – despite missing eyes, ears, and in one sad case, a nose – all desperately wanted their head-scratched and their chins chucked. It got a bit dodgy when those most desperate cases wouldn’t wait their turn, and began climbing onto my shoulders and clambering up my jeans (purring all the while). It took me about 15 minutes to carefully extricate myself from the web of claws and teeth to accept the staff’s invitation to tour the cat sanctuary at the base of the columns. Many thanks to Saucerlike for engendering such a great flashback!
Almost 20 centuries have passed since then, but Caesar’s spirit surely lives on in some of our aristocratic cats who rule over their temples with pride.
The ‘gattare’
1929 was the year the sacred area of Torre Argentina was excavated. This was also the year the history of the cats residency began. Stray and abandoned felines took refuge in the protected area below street level. From 1929 until 1993, the cats were more or less regularly fed by a succession of cat ladies or ‘gattare’ as they are called condescendingly by the Romans.