Without warning they creep deep into your heart...

After Piccolo and Skippie passed away earlier this year I didn’t think any furry creature would ever stir my heart again. Our doggies of 16 years were my life. Skippie’s death was a decision I took because she was suffering from cancer and she held on until it was cruel to let her carry on. Piccolo was a different story. I knew she was old and frail but the heart attack on that Sunday morning was so unexpected that I struggled to make peace with it.

And so life has continued this half-a-year without furry friends. I often felt empty without these little creatures that so depend on us. Garry and I have however decided ‘no more animals’ because of our difficult circumstances of living between two provinces that are so far apart. Yet, I now and again peeped at the animal shelter website, but I closed them before anyone could speak into my heart.   

Then it happened. When I came to Garry earlier this month, a black stray cat cried underneath our window non-stop for almost 6 days and nights. It drove me mad and I eventually made my viewpoint clear to him – "Either we feed this cat or it must go."  I was straight forward and brutal.

I searched the internet and according to the many sites there are millions of stray cats around. Obviously the rescue agencies cannot deal with them all. They however recommend for people to act responsibly and before feeding them, to have them sterilized and inoculated. I posted a message on our development's whatsapp group whether this cat belonged to anyone. A lady who is hardly ever here as it is mostly holiday homes for those from Johannesburg, responded: She had the cat sterilized etc and it is being fed by her gardener. But she welcomed it if I would care for it while she was away. She has named him Mr Bojangles. 

I started feeding him and so it began… It is not about the food, although he loves his pellets and fresh milk; it is about the company. He wasn't going home. He decided to stay. He came closer. He started following me everywhere. He talks. 'The talking cat.' We started talking. I call him and he answers. We understand each other. He started coming into the house. He has made his home in our house and in our hearts.  He looks like a black panther. Garry calls him Blackjack. I call him Sweetheart. I brush him daily and he lies and rolls around from pure pleasure. His coat is beginning to look beautiful! 

We have one thing in common…both of us hate the thunder and lightning. We have formed a pact about that aspect and today was one of those days. It rained softly earlier on, but then it was thunder and lightning as it has been for the past two weeks. In the middle of summer, it was a cool day, so the two of us ended up lying curled up on the bed…

We have a problem though. He ‘belongs’ to someone else. We therefore can’t just take decisions concerning him. We also will not be here all the time. I am soon to return to the Cape and what then? Garry works long hours. I argue that I didn’t ask for him. He asked for me. I say it all to exonerate my responsibility, but still we have a problem. Cats are not like dogs, which you load into a basket and onto a plane into a different province and home and voila problem solved!

But, yes for the moment we don’t think about that. That is a problem for another day… For the moment we enjoy each other's company. I have come to realise, we depend more on them than they on us. For them it is care, for us it is love. 

Without warning they creep deep into your heart...

After Piccolo and Skippie passed away earlier this year I didn’t think any furry creature would ever stir my heart again. Our doggies of 16 years were my life. Skippie’s death was a decision I took because she was suffering from cancer and she held on until it was cruel to let her carry on. Piccolo was a different story. I knew she was old and frail but the heart attack on that Sunday morning was so unexpected that I struggled to make peace with it.

And so life has continued this half-a-year without furry friends. I often felt empty without these little creatures that so depend on us. Garry and I have however decided ‘no more animals’ because of our difficult circumstances of living between two provinces that are so far apart. Yet, I now and again peeped at the animal shelter website, but I closed them before anyone could speak into my heart.   

Then it happened. When I came to Garry earlier this month, a black stray cat cried underneath our window non-stop for almost 6 days and nights. It drove me mad and I eventually made my viewpoint clear to him – "Either we feed this cat or it must go."  I was straight forward and brutal.

I searched the internet and according to the many sites there are millions of stray cats around. Obviously the rescue agencies cannot deal with them all. They however recommend for people to act responsibly and before feeding them, to have them sterilized and inoculated. I posted a message on our development's whatsapp group whether this cat belonged to anyone. A lady who is hardly ever here as it is mostly holiday homes for those from Johannesburg, responded: She had the cat sterilized etc and it is being fed by her gardener. But she welcomed it if I would care for it while she was away. She has named him Mr Bojangles. 

I started feeding him and so it began… It is not about the food, although he loves his pellets and fresh milk; it is about the company. He wasn't going home. He decided to stay. He came closer. He started following me everywhere. He talks. 'The talking cat.' We started talking. I call him and he answers. We understand each other. He started coming into the house. He has made his home in our house and in our hearts.  He looks like a black panther. Garry calls him Blackjack. I call him Sweetheart. I brush him daily and he lies and rolls around from pure pleasure. His coat is beginning to look beautiful! 

We have one thing in common…both of us hate the thunder and lightning. We have formed a pact about that aspect and today was one of those days. It rained softly earlier on, but then it was thunder and lightning as it has been for the past two weeks. In the middle of summer, it was a cool day, so the two of us ended up lying curled up on the bed…

We have a problem though. He ‘belongs’ to someone else. We therefore can’t just take decisions concerning him. We also will not be here all the time. I am soon to return to the Cape and what then? Garry works long hours. I argue that I didn’t ask for him. He asked for me. I say it all to exonerate my responsibility, but still we have a problem. Cats are not like dogs, which you load into a basket and onto a plane into a different province and home and voila problem solved!

But, yes for the moment we don’t think about that. That is a problem for another day… For the moment we enjoy each other's company. I have come to realise, we depend more on them than they on us. For them it is care, for us it is love. 

Our precious, but tear-stained land

This past weekend we drove up the N7, about 34 km past Clan William and the Pakhuis Pass to do the Sevilla Rock Art Trail. Driving along we experienced the Western Cape blossoming as is traditional during this time of the year - green, with colourful flowers, canola fields in full bloom set against its intriguing, magnificent mountain ranges. 

Natural flower garden in the Cape

Wupperthal and its mountains. All these plots are divided as vegetable gardens and the community is hard at work

At the Sevilla Trail a new world opened to us – a 5 km scramble, allowing us into the world of the San or Bushmen (sometimes incorrectly referred to as the Hottentot). There are nine sites on the trail where we could view the rock art – which really are stories told by the San. 

San rock art thousands of years old show a hunter with his bow and arrows

Storytelling was part of their culture and there are some sites left in our country (Western Cape and Drakensberg) where this can be explored, although many have been destroyed over time. These people had no written language other than their drawings, which makes it precious beyond words. 

Rupert Isaacson confirmed in The Healing Land that the San were the first people in the Cape and he explains their way of life:

What was certain was that for thirty thousand years, perhaps longer, they had populated the whole sub-continent, pursuing a lifestyle that include hunting, gathering, painting, dancing, but not, it seemed, war.

Beautiful rocks above the caves where we viewed the art

The story becomes sad, for as the white farmers expanded into the Cape, they took what they wanted and in the process became directly responsible for the extinction of the San.  Cruel means were used to starve, torture, beat and kill these little people. They were free and roamed the countryside; they attached no value to property or material things and regarded the land as belonging to all. But different cultures have different values, and the whites settling into the Cape Colony started putting fences down on land they claimed as their property and that included animals that once belonged to ‘all’. The San didn’t understand or agree with this. Survival to them and their families meant access to food and water.  

Alan Mountain wrote in The First People of the Cape:

As colonists fanned out beyond the settlement’s boundaries and into the territories of the San, contact and conflict with the indigenous people of the Cape became inevitable. Those San who lived in the caves of the surrounding mountains must have watched in horror as the new arrivals began to invade their ancestral hunting grounds.

This piece of art shows two Sans carrying a kill, which is food for the family

But it has been argued that the dispossession of land started well before 1652 as rock paintings in the Drakensberg show conflict between the San, the Khoikhoi and the Nguni. 

Beautiful little flowers all over the Cape

What I found most disturbing on this trip is the destructive nature of people who have no respect for history or regard for anyone else. A number of these rock painting sites are in danger of being closed to the public as they have been defaced, graffiti written over paintings or among the art; we were told that a group of people had a braai in a cave which has rock art, which had in fact led to the closure of that specific trail. 

The question that comes to mind is, what are we as so-called 'developed' people doing to our world?