Cats

This post isn´t really about cats, but I did see three on my explorations and even to see one in a day in Mexico City is a bit unusual, especially given that the cats were almost identically coloured.  I saw two while wandering through the rather charming mews of an otherwise nondescript and boring but for the wonderful flowers middle-brow sort of neighbourhood, just following a visit to one of their humongous supermarkets.  It dominates a mall and is called ¨Mega¨and for good reason.  Try and imagine, if you will, the Great Canadian Superstore, but with two floors, each the size of a single Superstore.  Yeah...Big.  I bought two 220 mg. bags of mixed dried fruit and nuts to help sustain me on my first couple of days in Puebla as I figure out where to eat there.  This preemptive bringing concentrated food, like the cashews I bought Saturday at theVancouver airport, has turned out to be a very good idea and this is really keeping me from going hungry.
     Back to the cats.  While wandering through the mews I noticed a large lanky long-haired cat, white with a dark bushy tail and face, not quite like a Siamese, approach a young father and son enjoying a snack together seated on a stone embankment.  Lying next to them on the embankment was an identical cat, probably the other cat´s sibling.  The dad called the first cat over who came to sit with them for a while.
A bit later, in a park, a young couple were seated together on the grass when a very thin looking stray cat approached them.  The young man had a tin of cat food which he promptly presented to the cat.  This cat, although a short hair, was identically coloured to the two long haired cats I saw a bit earlier.  Just before, I went for a walk through the labyrinth of winding streets cobbled with stones like beach rocks in a very well- to-do neighbourhood of San Angel, the town right next to Coyoacan.  I stopped there in a small chapel that I have previously written about in earlier trips.  A man caretaking the place told me that it is nearly six hundred years old.  the interior is gorgeous with a lavish gold-plated altar set off beautifully with the purple cloth of the Lenten season.
     As I continued my walk I came across two young, very thuggish looking men, and couldn´t really figure out why they were in this neighbourhood as they didn´t appear to be working there.  They might have been casing the ´hood for possibilities for break-ins. Anyway the vibe didn´t feel at all good so I let them continue walking ahead of me and I took a different route.  Then, when I left the neighbourhood I saw them again coming towards me.  Not wanting to take unnecessary chances I walked ahead of them quickly and turned onto a crowded street where I disappeared into a book store.  The two guys might have been completely innocuous but I have my doubts and, as a white visitor, I know that I could be perceived as an easy target here in Mexico, so I am watching my back.
     I had a great dinner in a rather hip eatery near my guest house, then, on my way to this cybercafe (not a bad place this one, they play classical music, eapecially Vivaldi, and the vibe is relaxed, quiet and respectful, and their rates are super cheap).  As I was walking past the square I noticed again a crowd of nearly a hundred or so locals yelling, banging and whistling, with a few riot police on standby so I asked one of them what´s going on.  He told me with a rather weary and cynical expression, that it was another protest against parking metres.  I smiled, shook my head then walked on.