Jenna de la Frontera: The Wild Cats of Cádiz

Another early morning: Patra and I once again try to obtain our residency cards.

We took the 7:15 am bus to Cádiz, the capital city of our province; also, the oldest city in Europe. “Cádiz?” you might say, “But I’ve never even heard of Cádiz! How can that be the oldest city in Europe?”

Perhaps you’ve heard of Hercules? Legend has it Cádiz was founded by Hercules when he parted Europe and Africa at the strait of Gibraltar. No big deal. History would have you believe the Phoencians founded Cádiz in 1100 AC (what does that mean? My map’s information says AC instead of AD or BC. Damn these Brits!) I prefer the Herculean version. Also, a guy on his way to India (known to us as Christopher Columbus) set sail from Cádiz in 1492. Needless to say, Cádiz has had an important place in history.

Back to our own epic journey, though. Just as the sky began to fill with light, our bus crossed the long bridge to Cádiz (surrounded by water on three sides). We stopped at a seemingly random intersection and several people got off. Thinking of last week’s stop in the middle of nowhere, I grew nervous (to quote our prez: “Fool me once…don’t fool me again!”) As we pulled away I saw a street name, Avenida Jose Leon de Carranza, which rang a bell. A few blocks later when the bus stopped again, I looked anxiously at Patra. “I think we get off here,” I said. She frowned, but followed my lead. Only after we disembarked did I remember the actual street name where we were supposed to get off: Avenida Ramon de Carranza. Once again, this burst of inspiration occurred as the bus was pulling away. This time, though, we were no longer on it. Oops.

We reoriented ourselves—luckily we’d both printed maps of the city beforehand—and started walking briskly up a main street. It was only a little after eight a.m. when we began walking, and thus my mistake wasn’t too costly; we arrived at the correct office at a quarter to nine, still fifteen minutes before it would even open. I was feeling hopeful; there were only a few other people in the office ahead of us. Also, in the past week, I made several more copies of just about every document ever given to me having anything to do with Spain: I made copies of our apartment lease, my Spanish bank account information, the page in my passport with an exit stamp from Mexico (what does that have to do with Spain? Nothing! But you never know…). We were Prepared.

At a few minutes past nine, Patra and I sat down with two immigration officers and pulled out our application sheets. They shook their heads. “No,” they said. Wrong sheet. I had a minor heart attack.

They handed us new forms, which we filled out as quickly as possibly in the office. This was fairly easy to do since the new form asked for EXACTLY THE SAME INFORMATION as the form we had first presented. Oh, except we had to check a box on this one indicating that we were the ones studying/working in Spain, not the relative of a person studying in Spain. Which is, I’m sure, extremely important.

Having filled out our new documents, we raced out of the building to find a place to make a single copy (of course, they couldn’t just give us two identical sheets to fill out). Finding the place to make copies closed, we entered a store in which we saw copy machines. The copy machines, as it turned out, were not for the general public since the store was actually an office, but a woman there took pity on us and made one copy each of our application forms. We hurried back to the immigration office and had to wait behind two or three people who had showed up since we’d left.

In that time, I noticed a poster on the wall with smiling people of different ethnicities pointing at the camera. The inscription read “Somos inmigrantes, como tu!” (We are immigrants, just like you!) I have yet to verify this, but I think Spain is fairly lenient about immigration. In the past two decades or so, it has become a popular destination for immigrants now that it’s generally recognized as a first-world country. The sign seemed cheery enough, but I felt a little indignant. “Me? An immigrant?” Oh right, I was at the immigration office…still, it felt strange to be identified with a word that is certainly loaded in the US.

Once again, we sat down with the immigration officers. This time, everything went smoothly. They took one copy each of: our application forms, our two letters from the Andalusian government explaining our work situation, and the information and visa pages of our passports. Five pieces of paper in all. We left the office relieved, but weighed down by the extra hundred or so unnecessary copies we still had.

After a quick croissant at a nearby café to celebrate our soon-to-be legality, Patra and I parted ways. She left for Seville by train to meet up with a friend, and I wandered the streets of Cádiz. Past the ruins of a Roman amphitheater, past the yellow-domed cathedral that you’re sure to see first in a google-image search of the city. Here I was walking along the coastal wall, large boulders on the ocean-side to fend off the tides. The sun was out, palm trees lined the sidewalk, I was feeling successful…and something started to smell fishy. Not a huge surprise, since I was next to the ocean and, up ahead of me, several fishermen cast their lines into the water. But then I looked down: the rocks below the wall were crawling with cats. And just ahead: a man down among the cats, setting out water and food. He left a trail of empty tinfoil—greasy with the remains of fish—and satisfied cats.

As infestations go, this one didn’t seem too bad. Not as cute as an infestation of koala bears certainly, but nothing like rats. I continued down the walkway toward the beach. After the land ends, a path along a breakwater continues out to the ruins of a castle on a tiny island. I took out my camera and framed the shot with cats in the foreground. After taking two pictures, I realize one scrawny black cat was advancing on me with eyes flashing. One black cat might not have been able to do much, but a herd of several hundred? I know what happened to catwoman; I’m not interested in superpowers. I continued on to the beach to stick my toes in the Atlantic once more.

On the way back from the beach, I saw the cat-man catapult himself from the rocks below onto the dividing wall. He walked off as though there was nothing unusual about the company he’d been keeping for the past hour or more. A lone cat sat on wrong side of the wall, the side reserved for people. As he passed it, I wondered if there would be some recognition between the cat and the hand that feeds it, but no. I wondered: does he name them? Does he love them? Perhaps this city inspires men to do to crazy things, things that can be hard from which to divine meaning: to divide land masses, to conquer what’s beyond the horizon, to tame a starving mass of clawed animals into submission.