Rebecca's Cat House

Rebecca's Cat House

After a few trips to Cuba, I had seen a few dog refuges, so I asked Nora to arrange for us to visit a cat refuge. Aniplant does not operate an animal refuge, but they help several with rations of food and some veterinary care.

Nora chose Rebecca's cat refuge, and after not finding her at home the first time, we found her the second time. Rebecca is an older woman, perhaps 80, and she lives in what was once a very luxurious house not far from our hotel and a stone's throw from the Florida Straits, which border Havana to the north.

Rebecca's house is a fairly large one floor home with a front porch all across the front face. The ceilings are high and the windows are huge. All stand open as there is no air conditioning, and the cats move from the inside to the porch by jumping through the windows. The porch roof is supported by Corinthian columns. All around the house is a tall wrought iron fence, and the lower eight feet of the fence is covered by sheet iron wired to the fence. That sheet iron is what keeps Rebecca's 30 or more cats inside her yard.

Rebecca's family was once wealthy as you might expect from the large house and the proximity to the water. She told us that when she was a little girl there was no Malecon (Havana's waterside Esplanade, and the sandy beach (now nonexistent) used to extend the two blocks up to her house. Rebecca received us on her large front porch, so I never got to see the inside of the house, although I could peek in the windows and through the screened front door. Years of deferred maintenance, chipped paint, and rusty iron sheets on the fence told me that her situation was more pressed now than when she was young.

And the cats? You ask. Well, they were everywhere you looked--front yard, inside, outside, porch. Frankly, they didn't look too healthy with their fur ruffled and dirty and many with ticks and fleas. At least Rebecca feeds them and water bowls were visible in several places.

Nora tells me Rebecca is very headstrong and doesn't easily accept suggestions about caring for the cats. After many decades of keeping such a collection of cats, she believes she has most of the answers. Nora knows differently, of course. Not every cat is neutered, which means the population will never decline. Once in a while Nora can get her to neuter her females or use a flea treatment on them. Nora knows she has to bring up suggestions for better care slowly and in a spirit of helpfulness. If Rebecca took offence, then the whole refuge would become worse off, so Nora displays her considerable patience and tries for gradual improvements.

Rebecca may have no money at all, but she can't be moved from her house. Until last month, all Cuban real estate was owned by the state, but now this is changing, and Cubans can buy and sell real estate. Rebecca inherited the right to live in her house from her parents, and she will undoubtedly stay there with her cats until she dies.

Then will come the hard choices of what to do with the cats. Not many people are ready to accept a cat or a few cats into their home. They may be killed by the crews of prisoners who patrol the city picking up stray, sick or ownerless animals. Who knows?

All I can say for sure is her cats are one notch better off than homeless. At least they have food and a safe place to sleep.

Les Inglis