Cat Among the Pigeons

(Jeanne is having a hissy-fit because she already wrote a blog, but her computer fed it to the internet, which swallowed it in one bite; so I’ve been drafted.)

Beneath our window, between 5 and 6 o’clock, a rusty rooster groans a greeting to the dawn, repeated between six and ten times, which is actually more of a summons than a greeting; but the dawn ignores him.  It does wake up the bells, which summon in their turn the brain-dead to Really Early Mass, where they presumably engage in REM sleep during the rituals.  The rooster renews his efforts at half-hour intervals until the dawn obeys, and after an unnecessary alarm clock goes off, we respond too.  Jeanne putters around getting ready for school and watches CNN in Spanish, while I don my cozy Oaxaca hoodie and take my mug of coffee out to the roof.

(One evening, Jeanne came bolting out to find out what was disturbing the fowls: a predator perhaps?  City girl, she had never heard a hen announce the arrival of a new egg in the world:  tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-ahoohoo!  Tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-ahoohoo!  They’re doing it again now as I write.)

On our previous visit, we lived up on the hill and could walk upstairs to the roof and enjoy a magnificent view over the town.  Here, we walk out the door to the rooftop and enjoy an equally magnificent view with the difference that we are among all the other rooftops.  You need to be there in order to realize how much of Mexican family life, in houses which turn their arses to the street, is lived on the roof.  We are surrounded by flowers, shrubs, gardens, colorful lines of laundry, piles of rubbish, collections of junk, and, of course, animals.

About forty yards away, a coven of cats, at least six of them that we have counted, share a half-dozen concrete and corrugated iron roofs with a flock of pigeons.  In summer they are presumably cats on a hot tin roof.  The birds and the cats literally rub shoulders in easy companionship – in fact, the pigeons are meaner to the pigeons than the cats are.  The cats migrate from one level to another, clambering over the pigeons’ crib as they do so.  Closer to us, about twenty feet away, a six-to-eight-year-old boy behaves in similar fashion, scrambling from one level to another and perilously and unnecessarily circumventing the big black water tank on the edge.  He has an evening ritual which we have not yet deciphered, so we do not know whether it is a functional part of the household routine or his own play, in which he cleans out a large kitchen pot then packs it again with something sloppy and scuzzy, then molds the stuff into a smaller container and carries it off with him.  On our own porch the bougainvillea are retreating for now but the geraniums are still vigorous.  There is a little bush by the door which Jeanne found covered in little birds, but she is no ornithologist so we don’t know what they were.  Not pigeons.

Another feature of life up here is the afternoon parade of thunderstorms which we can see approaching for miles, but so far there has been very little rain since we arrived.  Around us is a real neighborhood where no-one pays attention to the apparent gathering storm.  A Chow barks demanding admission to his house: we saw him in the afternoon bur recognized his 10.00pm voice.  A man comes around several times a day with a distinctive cry ending in a whoop, selling things from a little cart.  He may be yelling “cacahuet” (peanuts) but not pronounced the way we would expect it; we haven’t deciphered it and haven’t been down below to look when he comes.

Life is simple.  The kitchen is adequate but will not support our elaborate cooking style.  We shop every day in the old style at the covered market, bring home a roasted chicken or some chorizo.  When Jeanne comes home from school she will stop at the little tortileria on the next block and bring home the basis for lunch.  Have you ever had fresh tortillas?  Really fresh?  Really really fresh?  Still warm and wriggling?

I’ve bought a hat in the hope that Jeanne won’t give it away again.  If I wore it here I’d look like the Compleat Tourist, but it’s really for the next adventure, in New Mexico.  All I’ll need will be the horse.