It's the cat's meow, a corner of the central park of Lima's upscale seaside Miraflores district.
About 120 felines populate the sidewalks and grass, lounge in the trees and shelter behind the grates at the Church of the Miraculous Virgin, where they are fed by devoted volunteers.
Tourists pose for pictures with the cats, which are generally friendly and accept the caresses of strangers.
But they are not universally adored. Local resident Mariano Lindley said the smell of cat urine and excrement can be overwhelming. "When they proliferate, they spread disease," he said.
Every once in a while, unknown cat-haters poison their food, killing a few. And every September, when a cat-eating festival is held south of Lima in the town of Canete, volunteers pull guard duty to ensure they don't become someone's lunch.
"Unfortunately, we are in Peru, a place where I think we could use a little more civilization and humanity," said Natalie Sanchez, a member of Miraflores' Voluntary Feline Defense Group.
The 12-member group banded together in 2000 to care for the cats and put some up for adoption. Members gather donations to sterilize the animals and treat them for parasites.
Some of the cats descend from a pair municipal authorities introduced in the late 1990s to control a rat infestation. Others were abandoned by people tired of caring for them.
After a local TV feature this week focused attention on the cat colony, a top official at Peru's environmental health agency, Micaela Talavera, announced a commission would be created to determine whether they posed a health risk.
Sanchez called the announcement an overreaction, saying the cats get constant veterinarian attention.
"The cats of Miraflores' park are part of Miraflores. They are a Miraflores tradition," she said. "They've already been living there for 15 years. You can't call them a scourge or a plague."
Source
The 12-member group banded together in 2000 to care for the cats and put some up for adoption. Members gather donations to sterilize the animals and treat them for parasites.
Edited at 2012-08-07 04:50 am (UTC)
It's all a matter of perspective.
Yay! Anyone whose first instinct is to poison these cats rather than do something like this or donate to the cause is a sick individual.
2. It is done in honor of Santa Efigenia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephigenia
3. Cañete has a lot of african influences, because there were a lot of slaves there. "The first inhabitants of these lands were the Huarcos. Later, the area was inhabited by the descendants of the slaves forced to work on the cotton plantations. The old slaves and their descendents lived here. The slaves arrived from Guinea, Congo, and Angola, brought to the Peruvian coast during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to work in the cotton and sugar cane fields and in the vineyards." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Vicen
Edited to add: Also I don't see why is necessary, in a story of cats on Miraflores, talk about the Cañete Festival. Now everybody thinks that they are eating the miraflores' cats in Cañete just because they "taste good".
Edited at 2012-08-07 05:49 am (UTC)
She did tell me about a couple of incidents where, when she came to feed them, she found one so badly beaten, and the cat so afraid, that it hesitated to approach her, even though it recognizes my mom. (Sorry for using the term, 'it'. I don't know the sex of the cat and neither does my mom)
There was a time when it was apparent that someone was targeting the cats too. They'd disappear from their usual spot and appear somewhere else in the neighborhood, apparently tormented then killed. They didn't know who was doing it but they kept an eye out. My mom was even walking around with her umbrella, saying she'd whack that person over the head with it if she caught him/her doing that to the cats.
Anyway, one of the ladies in the neighborhood, who also feeds the cats, works at a vet. When they recognize a new member of the group, she takes them to work to have them spayed or neutered on her own dime. She even adopted a Persian cat after she took it home, cleaned it up, and fell in love with it. A couple of cats even got adopted by other people in the neighborhood too. I mean, geez, my mom even named them!
I just don't understand how people are capable of it, tbh.
I wish I didn't have such horrible cat allergies, cats are so cute :(