Odessey

Not to be confused with the word cretin, which means to be obtuse, on the Greek island of Crete, there's a larger population of cats than there are residents. These numbers probably don't include the multitude of tourists who are on the island from April to November. Nevertheless, these cats are all over the place and are willing to serve humans for free food and lodging. These felines don't belong to anyone and they aren't feral either. They're free agents who hire themselves out to the restaurants, hotels, markets, and private residences to keep the rodents at bay and to keep the floors free of spilled food in between the times during the day when the floors are swept and/or mopped.

Unlike the U.S., having the cats wandering from one establishment to another is perfectly acceptable on the island. There isn't any danger of rabies or distemper; Crete is free of those diseases so vaccinations aren't necessary. The only thing the cats have to fear are the crazy tourists when they get behind the wheel of the small cars they can rent for their holiday time.

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When my husband and I lived on this wonderful island, we were renting a two-bedroom apartment approximately two miles inland from the village of New Gouves, which was one of the popular seaside hubs for the tourists. The apartment building housed four units, two up and two down; all were occupied by U.S. military and their families. We had the lower front one, which had a wrap-around porch that looked out onto the courtyard in front and the driveway and pasture on the south side. It was in this courtyard where I first realized the incisive difference between the way Greeks treat cats and the way Americans do.

I had just gotten home from the base where my husband was stationed. There was a ruckus going on in the apartment just above ours. Suddenly I saw a black cat come flying out of one of the windows landing on the cement of the courtyard. Surprisingly the cat was ok.

One of the occupants of that apartment, a first class airman, appeared on his balcony. "Damn cat ate the hamburger I had out to thaw! Why these people don't have a leash law is beyond me." To tell you the truth, I don't know why the airman had the meat out on the counter anyway. In the U.S. that's just asking for germs and disease. He should have had it in his refrigerator.

As I stepped onto our porch, I noticed that the cat was limping. I was going to go yell at the airman when I realized that the cat had an infection on her right back leg. The limping may not have been from being thrown. The cat seemed to know that I wasn't going to push her away and followed me into the apartment. I tried to clean the infection but she wasn't too keen on that. When my husband got home, we were able to clean and bandage her leg.

I put a dish of water and a dish of leftovers down on the floor for her. While she ate, I studied her. She was a beautiful cat, Egyptian. She had a short pure black coat of fur, long legs, a slender mussel, and slanted green eyes. I opened the door to the porch to let her know that she could leave if that's what she wanted. But she stayed and I named her Odyssey. She kept the other cats out of our apartment, brought us gifts of dead rodents, and entertained us when we were bored.

When my husband's tour of duty was over, we didn't want to subject Odyssey to quarantine conditions so we introduced her to one of the nurses on the base. Odyssey settled right in at the nurses' dorm. I was told that she even invited her daughter and a couple of friends to join her.