A short while ago I wrote a couple of blogs about our new cats, Mimì e Cocò. I explained that we found them abandoned in the car park near the rubbish bins. We decided that it would be best to have Mimì, la mamma, checked out by a vet and sterilized. As is often the case here in Italy, this turned out to be more convoluted than one might expect.

We were informed that, by law, stray cats can be sterilized for free by the local ENPA (Ente Nazionale Protezione Animali). So I looked up ENPA in the Pagine Gialle (Yellow Pages), and the only address I could find was in Roma! I phoned the number in Roma and was told that the only ENPA vet in this area was based in Massa, a town about fifty minutes drive from here. They gave me the e.mail address of the vet, to whom I wrote immediately, but never received a reply.

In the meantime we asked around a few friends who have cats, and were told that the average price for the operation was 110 to 120 Euros. Someone said that they knew a vet in another town who would do a special price for abandoned cats: 90 Euros. Still a lot of money if you consider that by law you should be able to get it done for free!

Finally, after some more enquiries I was given the phone number of una gattara (a woman who looks after stray cats), who belongs to the association SOS Randagi (SOS stray animals). She told me that we had two options:

1. ask the local canile (kennel) which is controlled by the local health authority, and which should provide a free service;

2. have the operation performed through the association ‘SOS Randagi’, who have a special agreement with a local vet, who operates on stray cats for 50 Euros.

Obviously option one, being free, would seem the preferred method. Unfortunately however, life in Italy is rarely that simple. In order for the cat to qualify for free treatment we would have to fare la denuncia di un gatto randagio ai vigili (report a stray cat to the municipal police), who would then, theoretically, come up to the village and take a census of all the stray cats, a rather difficult task given the number of semi-wild cats running around these parts!

To demonstrate how effective this method is, a friend of ours has been requesting this service for three years without any success! Put it this way, in the last three years we have only seen the vigili in our village twice, and one of those times was when they came to see my husband when he applied for residency in Italy (another interesting story which I’ll tell you one rainy day!).

If in the meantime a cat has been adopted, such as is the case with us, then it is excluded from free treatment (what should we do, leave the cats running wild for months to prove that they really are strays?). So we decided to go for option two, which was successfully carried out in ‘The Italian Way’ of ‘L’Arte di Arrangiarsi’, as I will describe it in my next article.

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