Most of the day has been spent in the hotel. The military told everyone to stay inside today. They are afraid of riots. Our driver Gerado told me a few days ago that about 80% of the people of Honduras were opposed to the president. They believe he will cheat on the election which is part of the reason he took the ballots. I wonder why they would riot?
Around noon, itchy with boredom and curiosity, I had a cab take me to the City Mall. The front desk assured me the malls were open on Sunday. Upon leaving the hotel, a man sitting in the al fresco bar reading a newspaper offers to take us to the city mall. His car is plain and not numbered like all the other taxis I have seen. But there were no other taxis. It is an odd ride. No one is on the streets except an armed policeman in the middle of one block. A few cars plied their way on the twisty back street routes, but far less than usual.
At the mall, the large steel gates of the parking garage are closed and locked. Armed guards prowl around inside.
“Abierto?” I asked the driver. He pulls onto one of the gate-blocked sloped entrances to the parking garage and rolls down his window. Whistling to get the guard’s attention, he fires a torrent of Spanish. The guard shakes his head and replies. No, the mall is closed today. Why would it be open when the military told everyone to stay indoors? We return to the hotel.
Chavez speaks at noon. Two dozen people magically appear in the previously empty lobby/restaurant to listen. It is a short statement. I can’t understand him, so I watch the people. Some shake their heads. Some make faces. One woman turns her back on the television and speaks loudly to anyone who would listen in staccato Spanish. People agree with her. I may not understand much of the local language, but I understand that they do not like Chavez. They change the channel to the soccer game.
The stores are all closed except for the hair salon. The hair salon does very good business – it seems to be open every day from 8am to 9pm. I don’t know if the other stores were closed because of the military edict or because it is Sunday. The other stores seem to keep very odd hours.
I decide to go for a swim. It is pleasantly warm. I remain at the umbrella table after drying off, watching the people. There are a group of young dark-skinned men in the pool chattering in Spanish. A woman dives in, swims a few laps, and gets out and sits in the sun while I am there. She does this several times. A flock of missionary girls arrive and occupy the next table. They are young and excited and mostly oblivious to the concerns of Honduran politics. That’s when I spot the first character in the amazing part of this story.
Sitting by a small drain pipe is a gray-striped kitten. He watches the pool. He watches the Spanish-speaking boys. He watches the missionary girls. He watched me. I slowly approach him. The kitten scampers into the drain pipe! A gray blur and he was gone! I peer into the pipe – it is perhaps three inches in diameter. What a small kitten! I sit back down, hoping he’ll reappear. The missionary girls spot him before I do, but they approach too quickly and noisily and he disappears again.
Later, cleaned and dressed, I return to the pool area with my laptop. There is a small patio stocked with iron chairs and tables on the level above the pool. It is comfortably warm and pleasant in the shade. No police, no chattering missionaries, no soccer game, no sense of political unrest. I begin copying notes into my computer.
Then I hear a cat yowling. It must be the kitten! I jump out of my chair and prowl towards the direction of the sound.
The kitten is sitting at the bottom of one of the ramps leading to the pool. He is looking hopefully up the ramp into the garden. His body is stretched slightly forward as if he too, were listening for the yowling cats. He is all head and paws; his body made of gangly ropes which hold the oversized splay-footed paws to the large furry head. He hears me and scrambles into a grating in the ramp. There is a gap in the drain grating where one of the bars is missing. He must live in the drains, moving all around the area. Why would he stay there?
Then I heard the yowling again from the garden. Moving cautiously up the ramp to investigate, I see two cats. One is striped gray like the kitten and the other is white with black spots. They are yowling. I wonder if they are the parents of the awkward looking kitten. The cats spot me and dash into the plants in the lush garden.
At the al fresco bar, I talk with Leda. She owns a small business here and has stopped by to see how we are doing during all the political excitement. She explains the latest news – the Honduran military have closed the borders. They’re afraid the Nicaraguan military forces will arrive at the behest of Chavez. Leda notes that they have not closed the airports. She doesn’t expect them to. Like the other Hondurans I have talked with, she is glad the president is gone.
Leda laughs often and is very helpful. She is a font of information and wisdom. She doesn’t think much of my kitten. Our driver Gerado didn’t think much of cats either when we had discussed it previously. A lot of people here seem to prefer dogs.
At dinner, I convince my companions to save bits of their chicken and shrimp. I tuck that into a napkin, along with bits of my tuna sandwich. It is a very good tuna sandwich. I am planning to give my stripy friend a treat. I take the napkin and unfold it revealing a small pile of carne – meat. I go back up to the top of the ramp and sit cross legged to see that my furry pal gets his treat.
An armed hotel guard appears and lights a cigarette. He looks wary. Most of the big stores have armed guards or policemen in front of them, even without political unrest. It is a fact of life here. The hotel has several armed guards around this area because the hotel service entrance is near. They are thin, fit and friendly in a distant way. The guard ignores me.
Another armed guard appears. He looks at me sitting at the top of the ramp and says something in Spanish to me that I do not understand. My grasp of Spanish is very poor.
“Gato,” I say. “Si, si, si. Gato,” the second guard replies
A third armed guard appears. They chatter to each other and to me. I don’t understand them, but they are very friendly. The second guard retrieves the napkin of food and takes it over to the low wall surrounding the sidewalk next to the building. He retrieves a rectangular Styrofoam plate that was tucked behind the wall and places the napkin on.
“Por su gato,” he explains and sets the plate down.
The bigger white cat I had seen earlier appears. “Madre?” I ask tentatively testing my linguistic skills.
“Si,si.” All three guards agree that that is the kitten’s mother.
Now I am frustrated. I want the food to go to the little cat, not the mother. I do my best to try and communicate this.
I try “little gato”, which they don’t understand.
I hold my hands a small space apart and repeat “Gato.”
“Si, si, si!”
I still don’t know if they understand. “Gatito?” I offer.
That is clearly wrong, but they seem to see what I am trying to say and they correct me. Except I don’t understand him. It appears that the kitten will get the food, but I am not sure. I leave and hope the kitten will get the food I saved for him. He is so skinny. I shake the third guard’s hand and he says something cheerful in Spanish. I have bonded with the armed guards in the effort to feed the little cat, although I’m not sure they understand what I was trying to say
Inside the hotel, three of the missionary girls are standing around chattering. “Do any of you speak Spanish?” I ask.
Two of them do. I explain my problem with the guards and the kitten. They all remember the kitten and want to help. One of them agrees to go with me. I ask her how she knows Spanish and she tells me that she has taken six Spanish classes. We don’t get very far before there is an explosion of disagreeable noise from the doorway.
“Megan! Where are you going!” a wiry, tense-looking man yells. We try to explain. “No, you’re not! We are here on missionary work!”
I explain that if he’s worried, he can come with us. “No! We are here on missionary work!” He guides his lost sheep back into the hotel and I follow. I guess feeding a kitten is not missionary work.
I’m not sure why, but I feel guilty. I suppose it is a bad idea to bring a young girl outdoors to where three armed guards are standing about during a military coup. Still, I wonder about the kitten...
It is calm in my hotel room, but I am still wondering. I decide to return to the girls and ask them to translate my comment for me so that I can explain it to the guards. Surely the tense-looking man can’t object to that. At the doorway, there are now about a dozen of the missionary people. I spot one of the girls who speaks Spanish and ask her to translate the phrase “For the kitten, not the mother.”
“Para su bebé, no para su madre.”
She says it too fast for me. I ask her to repeat it. She does so, slowly. I repeat the phrase out loud to myself as I walk rapidly back out the door.
I needn’t have bothered. The security guards are not there. As I approach the place where the food dish was set, the kitten went skittering away, a flurry of head and feet. I grin broadly.
Back inside, I proudly announce, “He got it!” Most of the missionaries look pleased, my ersatz translator in particular. One guy gives me a questioning look and I give him a thumbs up.
So, with the help of the three armed security guards and some missionaries, I fed the gangly gray kitten living in the rain gutters around the pool. What really amazed me was that the guards had already been feeding him – for the Styrofoam plate had already had bits of food on it before we added my small feast. That’s why the cat stays. These three thin, fit, but distant armed guards have been caring for that kitten. Even during the military coup.
We can’t forget the small important things, even during the large important ones.
Copyright Mark C. Kehoe, 6/29/09
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