Cats, buses and automobiles

02 MAY CREVALCORE—The apartment is sparkling. Cleaning products and vacuum are put away. I’m choking on the fumes from a too-strong bleach to water mixture. So,the windows are open,the sun is out and temperatures are rising. It’s probably in the low 80s today.

It is the beginning of another week here in northern Italy. Promising new adventures must be balanced with sadness. My black cat, Mimi, has disappeared. She escaped Saturday night while we were unloading the groceries. She had been out before and seemed to know her way home. I’ve walked every street in the area and still have no sign of her. The good news is that there are no expired animals of the feline variety anywhere in the vicinity. The Romans, once again, have made my search easier—their gridded streets make it easy to block out the search area. Mimi is also a survivor, easily the most curious cat I have ever had and I’ve had a few. Hopefully, she got lost, began meowing and is being taken care of by some nice old lady. Next phase of the search is putting up some flyers and calling local vets. Her address is inside her collar and she had had a microchip installed before her departure for Italy, so if a vet gets a hold of her she should be able to make her way back to us. I’ve been trying to think like she would; there’s some fields nearby that I have staked out at dusk thinking that that is the first place she would head if she got out. We’ll see what happens. I always figured that something like this would come to pass owing to her roaming nature.

To make matters more interesting her sister, Sasha, has been having UT (urinary tract) problems. She must have a stone in her bladder or something. I understand that bladder cancer is extremely rare in cats. The vet has had us give her some antibiotics but this hasn’t seemed to help that much so I’m going to have to crate her up and take her in tomorrow. Whatever it is it’s going to cost some euros. Research on the web indicates that it is most likely some kind of stone but that these problems are often chronic. Yippee! I’ve been consuming massive quantities of dark chocolate to compensate. Milk chocolate is for wimps—I go straight for the dark stuff. So now that I’m unemployed, have one missing cat and one sick cat, I can relate my weekend trip to Fanano.

The sun popped up bright and early on Sunday. My lids definitely did not want to open for business. I didn’t sleep well after having worried about Mimi most of the night. Moreover, the day before had been spent at Stefania’s parent’s house for my niece Virginia’s fourth birthday party. Virginia, the twins, Lorenzo and Vittoria, plus massive amounts of hand-made tortellini and steak off the grill sapped what was left of my energy.

Saturday night was topped off by Mimi’s aforementioned jail break and a trip for a “megaspesa” (mega grocery shopping) at the Iperkoop in Bologna. The place didn’t look that big on the outside, but it was cavernous on the inside. I think that most of it was underground. It is the biggest grocery store I’ve ever seen in my life. To make matters worse, it’s probably owned by some transnational krypto Wal-Mart group. The place just had Wal-Mart written all over it. However, I was in no position to argue about where we were shopping—I just go where I’m told ;)

Everyone and his brother, sister,aunt and uncle must have been there. I swear, there were 47 registers all going full tilt. The people watching was optimum. Folks from all nationalities were represented. Stef and I turned our phones on and split up. It was ‘excuse me, pardon me’ all the way to aisle 567 to get the cleaning supplies. The shelves were literally picked clean from the marauding armies of consumers. Someone is making some serious cash off that place.

After two hours, four tons of gear shoehorned into the Micra and a half-hour drive home, we had it all stowed in our mini apartment and one cat on the lam. Sunday morning I got up at eight (which to those of you who know me is considered very, very early). I walked the streets for about 45 minutes with no luck. Stef and I grabbed a cappuccino and cornetto (cappuccino and croissant) at this small bar on Via Matteotti a few blocks from our pad. In Italy, you order first, they serve it to you, you eat it and then pay for it. Furthermore, the cappuccino is probably smaller in size than your average American Dixie cup and costs only about one euro. I’m really starting to see the portion distortion that we suffer from back home. Even if there were Starbucks in Italia, their portions would have to be microscopic in comparison to their American counterparts. The amount of milk in your average regular latte in the States is what an Italian would drink in three days. Plus, they ain’t gonna pay 3 euros for a coffee with milk. Again, drink at the bar if you want to pay less and don’t stick your hand out for the change. They’ll put it in the little tray on the bar.

Fueled by a nice jolt of caffeine, I fired up the awesome turbo diesel power of the Nissan Micra, turned on the obligatory daytime running lights, tuned in to RMC and headed out towards Fanano. Fanano is a small town nestled in the high Apennines in the Province of Modena. It’s about 60 km as the crow flies from Crevalcore. (Sorry folks. I don’t have time to hold your hands and do the metric conversion thing for you. It’s time to get on board with the rest of the world and go metric. It’s a system of tens, so the math deficient among you, like myself, will enjoy the lack of fractions. How big is a 64th of an inch, anyway? I mean even the English, who invented the Imperial system in the first place, went metric in ‘96.)

It took awhile to pick our way through Sunday traffic. We first headed southwest to Modena, past the Maseratti factory and then southeast towards the Apennines. The Apennines are an ancient chain of mountains that run down the spine of Italy. The foothills start just to the south of where we live in the flat Po River Valley. From there they build to some fairly high peaks. Montecimone is the 8,000-foot or so summit that towers over Fanano. Snow is still in evidence above the tree line. The approach to the higher Apennines was beautiful. Not a cloud to be found and just a little haze. Sportsmen were trout fishing with extremely long poles. Cyclists and motorcyclists dotted the roads everywhere. (Note from the editor: cyclists ride bicycles and bikers ride motorcycles.) Here they jokingly call the dudes on the crotch rockets “centauri” (centurions) because they look like they just walked out of the gladiator ring with all of their gear on. No frat boys wearing cut-offs without helmets on 1200cc Yamahas here. These boys that ride the switchbacks really know what they’re doing. They don’t have the knee pads on their leathers for nothing—they literally lay their bikes down going around bends. Luigi, the 65 year-old father of my brother-in-law who was present at Saturday’s party and an avid cyclist, boasted that he climbs the hills in this area in his large chaingring (i.e. biggest gears). Yeah right. The guy weighs 140 lbs. soaking wet and couldn’t roll the big ring on the flat, let alone these substantial 10 percent plus grades around here in his dreams.

The driving is very fatiguing. Switchback after switchback. At one point, I took a right when I should have turned left and stopped abruptly to turn around. Obviously too fast for the yahoo in the Audi convertible behind me who ‘cheerily’ called out, “frecce” (turn signal) as he blazed past me. “Va cagare” I replied. Look it up. This is a family blog. Exchanged pleasantries aside, we rolled into Fanano and followed the main drag to a large blue “P” sign which means “parecheggio” (parking lot). Found a place right away. After making sure the lot was free ‘o’ charge, we headed out. I had my Canon 20D around my neck and was doing my best Joe Ledford impression (matching safari gear, 400 pockets bulging with lenses, infrared night-vision goggles, hand-held GPS locator, portable Navy SEAL satellite phone etc.) However, I made a very un-Ledforian-rookie mistake and had blasted off a dozen pics before I realized that I had left my memory card back in the car. Hike back to car, retake pics, catch up to the Stef.

At first I couldn’t find her; she had gone off to buy me a t-shirt. We had noticed while driving that my Nike tennis shirt kind of, er, smelled ‘funky.’ Didn’t smell like I had just forgotten to wash it but much more acrid. We finally concluded that it must have fallen on the floor and Sasha, the sick cat, had used it for target practice. Apparently, when cats have UT problems, their litter habits break down and they take aim at whatever they please. Guess it serves me right for leaving my shirt out.

Found a cool, new black t-shirt. I put it on in the broom closet seeing as this “negozio” (store) was all of about 100 sq. feet. We promptly buried the offending article of clothing in the bottom of a paper bag. Being the fastidious American clean-freak that I am—I usually carry an extra toilet kit in my car in case such emergencies arise—you know, like if my hockey bag were to explode in my face on my way to work and I needed a quick freshening up. (My scrupulously scrubbed American parents, please never buy used hockey clothes. Skates, sticks, helmets, maybe. Gloves, pads, no way. There must be 800 different kinds of flesh-eating staph residing in those things.) Haven’t yet had the chance to bury personal hygiene items in the area, like a squirel burying nuts for the winter. So I just had to hope that the new shirt did the trick and that no odor transfer had taken place.

And no, stereotypes are not necessarily true. Europeans are not unwashed heathens. Well, heathens maybe, but then so am I. It’s just that Americans, in my vast travels, tend to go way overboard and smell like mobile cosmetics counters. Shampoo. Rinse. Repeat. Soap up. Mousse. Gel. After shave. Cologne. Deodorant. Lotion. Makes me wonder if those stories of guys who were in ‘Nam not bathing for several days before going on patrol are true. When people are abroad, their senses tend to be heightened. There’s a whole other world out there with new sights, sounds and yes, smells. Add in the average European’s different concept of personal space and the odd fellow who worked up a bit of sweat at work and you’ve got a Proustian olfactory souvenir that will last a lifetime...buy not necessarily apply to everyone.

This said, one generalization that is generally true is that Italians do indeed talk with their hands and do get into your airspace. But hey, there are fringe benefits, too. When you greet or say goodbye to friends of the opposite sex you kiss them on the cheeks. Just once on each side. Not fifteen times like in France. Case in point: The other night when we were in Bologna, it was getting down to the end of the night and as we bid our goodbyes to Roberta and Alessandro, I then moved in with lightning quickness to kiss good-bye our other female friend, Paola, who also happens to be very easy on the eyes. She laughed and said, “But John, we came with you guys. We’re not leaving yet. You’re taking us home. You just wanted to kiss me, didn’t you!” Oh. Does the Fifth Amendment apply in Italy?

One other grooming near-disaster to report. I bought one of those electric hair trimmers at the store about a week ago. So when we got back to Stef’s parents’ house I marched right into the bathroom to try it out. My three hairs were getting a bit unruly, you see. But as you know, haste makes waste. I ripped the box open, plugged it in and went to work. The first pass of the combine down the wheat field let me know that I had forgotten to put the little adjustable plastic guard on the machine. Whoops. I mean my hair was a good half-inch long and this thing went all the way down to the skin. Can you say Mr. Clean? I mean the stripe I cut was bright white, it had been 38 years since the sun had penetrated all the way down to my scalp. I burst out into hysterical laughter which of course brought the ‘boss’ into my salon. Let’s just say that I did not win rave reviews for my performance. I thought it was funny. She did not. But, whattya gonna do? Had to burn the remaing crops to the ground. Ah, it’s good to do that from time to time anyway. Start over from scratch. Within four days it was back to normal and now I need to trim it again.

As you can probably tell, all of these asides aside, Fanano was just average in interest. The scenery was nice. We had a picnic of mortdallea sandwiches (I actually found a warm can of Coke in a small store) and drove around the rest of the day through the mountains. Got home at dusk, just in time to walk every street in the central part of Crevalcore again looking for my cat. No luck. This feline is really costing me a lot of money and aggravation. If I find her, she’s going to be in big ASS trouble and will definitely not be going out again in the near future.She’s got a 10-minute misconduct and one game suspension to serve before she gets out of my sight again. Arrivederci America.