J. J. Castillos - Juan Jose Castillos - Val Isaacs - Elizabeth Valentine Isaacs
GINGER'S FAMILY
Hello, welcome to our home, Val and J. J. will be pleased to introduce you to our little furry friends and we'll tell you a story so that you can get to know them. It's a rather sad story (as it's usually the case with our pets in the long run) but fortunately with a happy ending ! But let's stop holding you with this wordy introduction and learn, as you move down, all about General Ginger and his family.
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If you wish to see new pictures of the family six months after the first ones were taken, go to the bottom of this page and you'll find a link that will take you there.
GENERAL GINGER'S FAMILY
My name is Juan José Castillos, I'm an Egyptologist, that will probably explain my lifelong fascination with our feline friends, the fact is that I have always on and off had cats (or rather, they have chosen to honour me with their company) to the point that my wife thinks I'm already half-cat. I have to admit I understand them quite well and we get along fine.
I live in Montevideo, Uruguay, with my wife Val Isaacs and I would like to tell a you a story about a very special cat, General Ginger, and his family.
We live in a rather large house and we already had two stray brothers we had rescued from the street who lived in our backyard. One day a beautiful, big ginger cat showed up at our doorstep demanding to be fed. He had the wide, massive head males of his kind have, his body was all muscle without an ounce of fat and although many scars and marks showed he had been around, he had a placid and self- confident attitude that seemed to say "as long as you don't mess around with me, mate, we'll be all right...".
He settled down to a routine of coming home every morning and every evening, almost at the same time (we never saw his watch, but he must surely have had one), and obviously the word spread around because soon another black male cat and a very pregnant tortoise-shell female joined him.
As the weeks went by, the female had her kittens and not being dumb, brought them to our garden where we found one morning three pairs of bright little eyes curiously watching us from under a structure near a wall. Just by looking at the kittens you could tell who was the father, one of them was an especially cute ginger ball of fat with a round head and a fluffy tail.
In order to cut this story short, after some time, one of the kittens died of natural causes and another was sadly run over by a car while he was venturing into the wide world, so we brought mother and son into the safety of our house, where the son grew into a beautiful big ginger cat. His father one day didn't come anymore and we knew that something must have happened to him because although he was always very careful crossing the street, there were many people in the area walking rather ferocious-looking dogs, who didn't seem to mind their pets chasing other people's small animals.
We had mother spayed so that we wouldn't have an overpopulation problem in our hands and she and her son settled down to a life of luxury and relaxation, in which the biggest worry was to stand at an open window watching the birds' every move or who would take the choice spot in front of the heater in winter.
In Uruguay Christmas eve is not the quiet evening we read about in the books in which "not a mouse stirred...". Here it's considered a big celebration, something like the 4th of July in the States, so from ten o'clock at night till well past midnight all hell breaks loose and the noise and flares are quite disturbing for everybody, especially for our cats who didn't have a clue of what was going on.
During those restless nights, while stroking the kitten's head under mother's attentive look, I used to try to soothe him telling him a story about his father Ginger. I told him that every year the dogs gather in strength to attack the cats and drive them away. They come with all sorts of weapons and at first they seem to succeed, the cats retreat and are about to be defeated when the much feared General Ginger comes into the battle with his troops and after a bitter fight, forces the dogs to flee for their lives. When the noise died down and everything was peaceful again except for the occasional cat calls in the background, well, to us it was the army celebrating another of father's brilliant victories !.
I'm not sure if they understood my story, but curiously mother and son seemed much more relaxed after I had finished and if you know cats, you realize that there are many things that are real but are hard to explain, like the mysterious way in which they seem to understand you without words, just by looking deeply into your eyes.
General Ginger became sort of a tradition at home and we promised his widow and son that some day we would get the little one a girlfriend so that the General's line wouldn't be a dead end. A few months ago, a friend gave us a young and beautiful female ginger cat she could no longer keep, and thus, as nature took its course, we recently welcomed seven fluffy little balls of hair into our home. We would like to share with you some of the pictures we have taken of this family and while you look at them, you will perhaps imagine the good old General, from wherever he is now, smiling at his son and saying trying to hide the satisfaction in his voice: "I asked you, my son, to continue this illustrious line of soldiers, but you got carried away and produced a whole battalion ! ."
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"Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of."
Sir Walter Scott
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