Cats of Rome

You've probably heard about them. If you've been to Rome, you've seen them. They are impossible to miss, especially if you're doing the tourist thing.

The cats of Rome are the guardians of its ancient ruins. They guard the Temple of Saturn in the Forum, the huge foot of Constantino, the ruins at Torre Argentina (Temple where Caesar was stabbed by Brutus)...
...The main legion guards the Colosseum (in the picture), but you'll find the cats all over the city.

Where did they come from? Egypt, of course. When the Egyptian dynasty fell, cats boarded ships and took trips around the world. Some of them ended up in Rome, because as you know, all roads led to Rome in those days. For a time, the Roman Catholic Church considered cats to be witches (huh?) and began hunting them down.

Now the cats are back in full force, and according to the last census there are 300,000 in the city.
I don't know if the city feeds the cats, but there are groups of volunteers who feed them, spay them, and give them medicine.
Some restaurants made a habit of leaving a plate of food on the windowsill, for the cats to enjoy.

Little old ladies like to feed the cats out of their own pocket. These ladies are called 'Gattarre' (gatto=cat) and we have one on our block.
My parents don't live anywhere near the ruins, but the neighborhood has its fare share of cats. I once started feeding a black cat who had a stump for a tail. Needless to say, the next day 10 cats were waiting under our balcony. I fed them tuna, leftover fried fish, and milk. Milk is a precious commodity for us, because we can't drink the local kind, so we import longlife milk from France, via Milan. As a result, we don't drink milk very often. But at the time I tied yarn to a paper plate filled with milk, and lowered it to the pavement, for the cats to lap up.

Dozens of cats started coming over, and they would squabble amongst themselves, chasing each other up trees and overturning paper bowls.

When my mother realized the extent of my operations, she firmly banned me from the pantry, rightfully claiming that she had enough mouths to feed, and if I wanted to feed the cats I should buy cat food out of my own pocket.

The last straw broke when my father came home from work one day, and said that when he left the house before 7 am that morning, a cat was sitting in front of our door, on the first floor of the building. It probably snuck in at night and sat there waiting patiently for his daily ration of canned Tuna.

That's when I acknowledged that the Cat Operation had gone too far, and I quit feeding them.

I was a little old cat lady at the age of 12