Hola gatets noies! I’m writing from Barcelona which will be Adult Beginner HQ for the next couple of weeks. While my primary foci are the Primavera Sound music festival and the wealth of cultural and gastronomic offerings Barcelona has to offer, an interesting side-quest has emerged. Since the festival starts today and my wifi is dreadfully slow, I’m going to do a short photo diary-type post this week in honor of the many cats I’ve encountered thus far.
I haven’t quite established the connection between Catalonia and cats (“gat” in Catalan) beyond the similarities in English names. According to one source, there is estimated to be around 700 colonies of feral cats in Barcelona with some 9,000 animals in total. That’s a lot of chunky bois and chunky girls. While some cities like Rome take pride in their sizable feline populations, I haven’t yet determined if the same is true here. I did, however, stumble across a cat sanctuary:
I couldn’t find an entrance but there were a lot of playful kitties in there. This was on the way to The Grand Chunker of Them All, El Gato de Botero (see above). He was hanging out amidst an ongoing children’s science fair and the kids were loving on him as much as they loved on science experiments involving dry ice explosions. From then on, I’ve been seeing cats everywhere. Here are some examples:
That’s it for now, my little cats and kittens. I’ll post more over on my Instagram. Until then, if you have any information about cats (in the region or in general) please post them in the comments.
Until next week, adéu!
