The friend, who lives in Ortahisar in a splendid property that runs right the way along one side of a valley dotted with old pigeon houses, had decided that the quality of her life would be much improved if she had as many as possible of the cats that haunted her terrace neutered. A visit from the vet was duly scheduled.Come the day, and I had eight cats trapped in my kitchen howling and carrying on while I waited for them to be given anti-parasite treatment. In the adjourning room another cat was caged in a basket howling and carrying on while I waited to have some nasty pea-sized lumps in her armpit examined. Meanwhile over in Ortahisar my friend was doing her level best to herd her semi-wild brood. Finally she managed to corner one male in an empty cave room. Quick as a flash she slammed the door. Unfortunately the cat was quicker than a flash and beat the door latch to it. Only then did my friend realize that the key was on the outside of the door. The only other possible escape route was a window the size of a serving hatch. My friend, who is hardly a size zero, Kate Moss waif type, was forced to squeeze herself through it and along the tunnel rather than ledge that stretched out on the other side.
The vet arrived. We vaccinated my brood and paused for coffee on the Ortahisar terrace. Then the recaptured male cat was knocked out ready for treatment in a cave sitting room. Alas, no sooner did work begin than the electricity cut out. A frantic search of the rambling property revealed no handy hurricane lamps in working order, nor yet any sizeable flashlights.Eventually the vet was forced to neuter the poor thing in the pool of light cast by a wind-up key fob torch.
The remaining females had all been corralled into cat baskets, even the one that the vet’s assistant had only managed to grab as it flew through the air toward her face. We started off back to Göreme, with reassuring silence emanating from the back of the car. Then suddenly there came an extraordinarily loud wail, and I glanced round to see one of the cats standing on top of the pile of baskets. So impossible did its escape seem that briefly we wondered whether it was a stray that had crept in unnoticed while we were loading the car. But no -- somehow that poor, frantic animal had managed to force its way out through the side of the basket.
We pushed it back inside again and continued to Göreme to pick up my lumpy pet (a splinter rather than cancer, thanks for asking). “If ever you feel like retiring,” I said to the vet as he slammed the car door for the last time, “there was this English guy Herriot. He made a packet out of writing about rural vetting…”
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
