I'm not homesick, I'm just naming cats after all my friends
The 2am kitten rescue; leaving farm life for the land of the extroverts
Hello! Today’s newsletter come to you from Florianópolis in southern Brazil, woohoo! We spent a day in Brazil at the beginning of December while visiting the Iguazú Falls, but this is the first time either of us have delved into the country properly. My first impressions are that everything feels supersized: the cities, the tropical fruits, the bums on the clothing manikins in shops… it’s like we’ve arrived unprepared to a party hosted by extroverts, especially after sleepy Uruguay.
We said our sad goodbyes to Fede and his eco farm, Tatacua, on Friday morning and crossed the border later that day through Chuy. From there we took possibly the worst night bus yet to get to Porto Alegre, and spent a very fun weekend in Brazil’s southern-most city. Over the next week we’ll be working our way north to São Paulo, where our good friend Anthony (human, not cat) will make his biblical appearance on Easter Sunday morning.
I had very few expectations for Porto Alegre, which we chose mostly as a convenient stopping point on the bus route towards São Paulo, but it was great! It’s only the 12th largest city in Brazil, but its surrounding area has more inhabitants than the entire population of Uruguay, which says a lot. We experienced our first all-you-can-eat Brazilian buffet lunch at Chalé da Praça in the historic centre (excellent quality, less than £10 each) and watched Brazil v England while drinking suspicious green pints with a surprisingly gentle crowd at Brechó do Futebol.
I loved Uruguay for lots of reasons, especially its wild, deserted beaches and strong butterfly game, but it’s refreshing to be in busy cities again surrounded by other people. It’s what was missing from Montevideo and gives Porto Alegre a good atmosphere. On Saturday night we had the double pleasure of sitting in busy bars and visiting an actual supermarket, stocked with all the food you could need (and priced affordably!) Imagine.
We had an absolute riot at Tatacuá, and I’m already missing farm life – the food, the pond, the pets and even the invading cows. I learned how to use a machete properly, how to worm kittens, and how to herd those pesky cows (arms wide, making the right noises). Our days there were lightly structured by the routine of getting up, cleaning and feeding ourselves and the animals, helping out with the chores of the day (gardening, chopping and gathering wood from the forest, helping to fix things that are broken…) then at some point lighting the big fire at the back of the house for cooking and hot water.
The fire is great – not only is it just really big fun, but it provides a simple and quite roman heating system: two big iron pipes line the bottom of the fireplace to heat the water tank, and in winter provide underfloor heating, too. The oven is another huge cavity on the other side of the fireplace with an opening into the kitchen itself, and so it was important to keep the fire going through the day if we wanted to cook something in it at night.
A bonus when building one’s own house must be that you can design it to fit your own specific needs and proportions. Fede is a big guy (tall and large as opposed to fat, I should clarify) and everything in the house is made to reflect that – enormous bed, a bathtub you could swim in, sofas on platforms, tables to seat ten… even the kitchen counters are higher than your regular off-the-shelf products, which made my arms ache whenever it was my turn to prepare lunch, but Dave wasn’t complaining.
The house may be remote, but it’s not without its comforts. There’s fast wifi, a projector and screen for film nights, and plenty of plug sockets. Fede says he created Tatacua in the “spirit of being as natural as possible, but embracing some industrial benefits and letting them be seen”. Ie., the materials used to build the house exterior are all natural (clay and eucalyptus wood) supported by pine and boards discarded by local wood mills. But the plumbing – which, powered by the fire and water pump, provide possibly the best showers in all of Latin America – is very visible on the inside.
The effect is quite beautiful, and of course Fede is a brilliant artist so there are plenty of his own paintings and drawings hanging on the walls and ceiling. You can see more of his work here – and if you happen to be a dab hand at video editing and fancy a trip down to rural Uruguay, get in touch!
Let the record show that I am predominantly a dog person, and always have been. Cats are great and all, but can anything really match up to the loyalty and soppiness of a big hairy golden retriever, idiotically devoted until death do you part? Well maybe, it turns out, if those cats come in the form of tiny helpless kittens.
When we arrived at Fede’s farm a couple of weeks ago, he told us that one of the cats, Gigi, had recently had six kittens – her second litter in just a few months – but that sadly four of them had disappeared, presumed dead, while he was away for the weekend. He was sad but philosophical about it (“nature can be cruel…”) and said it was likely a dog or other visiting wild animal had got to them while they were left outside.
The two remaining kittens were brought inside to live safely in Fede’s (enormous) square bathtub, but they were very skinny and nervous. Gigi was limping badly and quite disinterested in her babies, clearly having gone through some kind of trauma during Fede’s absence.
That night, at around 2am, I woke up to a crash as she jumped in through our bathroom window (very inelegantly given the bad leg) and then I couldn’t get back to sleep – I was sure I could hear something else outside, or was it in the bathroom?
Sure enough, sat on the bathroom window ledge was a tiny black and white kitten, looking pretty perplexed about its situation. The mum must have tried to move her remaining two kittens out of the bathtub again, I figured – so where was the second one now?
Black and white kitten safely settled with Gigi on a blanket on the floor of our room, I took my torch and headed outside to investigate. It had been raining, and another huge storm was due, and given all the nature out there it was unlikely the remaining kitten would survive if left out overnight.
Imagine my absolute joy when I shone my torch into a bush and saw not one, but three little pairs of ears looking back at me – the missing kittens! I dragged Dave out of his sleep and we performed a 2am rescue operation to scoop the kittens out of their hiding place and get them back inside. I must have woken up every hour that night (at one point to find them jumping around on my bed) but it was such a happy feeling.
The next morning we reunited the four escapees with the remaining two (still in the bathtub) – and over the next two weeks I became completely obsessed with them all. We watched them get cheekier and more confident every day, eventually growing big enough to escape the bathtub and hide in cupboards, fight with curtains and chase our feet.
By the time we left the farm on Friday, all but one had found homes… I’m still tempted to go back for little Anthony and take him backpacking with us. (Yes, we named them after our friends and I’m delighted to say that Tony has stuck.) I’m sure he’d love it.
Stories from the (not so ancient) archives
Thinking of visiting Argentina, or just want more of my rambling? Here’s a guide I wrote to the country’s bizarro cash situation, for which you either need to know a guy who knows a guy, or take a slightly hairy walk down a back alley in order to not be ripped off by inflation.
Note that this was written in November, and things have changed a fair bit since then – although cash still reigns and the blue (street) rate is still much better than using the official exchange rate for payments. Confused? Yes, we were too.