Yes, "gattare" are cat ladies, the kind souls who go about making sure the feral cats of Italia have food to eat. The name might not always be quite respectful, but that's their problem. Are you a cat gent? You're a gattaro.
I've posted before, a long time ago, on Torre Argentina, the great Roman cat sanctuary. But they've beefed up their site and you should visit again. Here's a story from the-colosseum.net about these half-wild royalty of the stones. And here, still in Italian, a page from Milan. (Go to BabelFish.com to translate.)
Here's a little tidbit from the Torre Argentina diary:
Wednesday, December 17 -- Pierluigi came with a gift for Vladimiro, 5 little cans
to be precise. We had the unfortunate idea to open these cans of exquisite cat
food in the office: we immediately realized how many cats were actually hiding
in the office, There was an out and out assault on the small portion that
Vladimiro knew was rightfully his; he deftly slapped Iron and Moulin Rouge and
then the other cats did not even dare to come close! Of course we felt sorry for
them and opened all the cans.
Sounds like my house!
5 comments:
Do they have a name for crazy cat lady? I don't let mine handle more cats than just me.
You know, I was wondering about "what if it's just the one cat," so if I run into that word I will definitely tell you!
An Italian friend informs me that the name is kind of a play on words, since "gattare" not only comes from the word for cat "gatto," but from the fact that most of these cat ladies travel and carry their cat food around on rickety bicycles that make a kind of "gattaregattaregattare" sound as they rattle along.
Ann, that is fascinating and I can just see those bicycles. I have seen cat ladies in Florence with plastic bags of catfuud tins making their chimey sound too.
Vladimiro sounds like the dominant man cat in the office, so he probably got the lion's share...
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