The Cats of Old San Juan
When I moved down to Puerto Rico near the end of the last decade, I settled in the neighborhood of Viejo San Juan, where the antique, atmospheric lanes hugged a narrow peninsula lapped on one side by the waters of the Bahía de San Juan and the other by the Caribbean Sea as it bled into the Atlantic Ocean.
Though it was always the tourist heart of the island, with cruise ships disgorging their passengers who would then wander around the streets, herd-like, before returning to their boats and their journey, the boricua heart of the place still beat. There was a little restaurant, Deaverdura, right across the street from my apartment, where you could get cheap, clean Puerto Rican comida tipica and where I would not infrequently saddle up to the bar for happy hour after a day of writing. A few blocks further down the same street was a dive bar which I always called Nellie’s, after the owner, whose diminutive, ancient mother would greet me and my beloved dog Max after we took a late night walk on the walls of the old city under a clear Caribbean moon and invite us to sit down on one of the plastic chairs outside on the street to have a Medalla and a chat with her and whoever might be around. Between the old town and the ocean was La Perla, a neighborhood where you could pretty much get anything your heart desired at any time of the day or night and which boasted an excellent venue that alternated DJ’s with live music based in a semi-derelict house looking down over the tumbling waves. In the morning, I would go the Plaza de Armas, with its splashing fountain and its statue of the salsa composer Tite Curet Alonso, and get a coffee as the pigeons stirred busily in the square and the city began to go about its business.
And then there were the cats.
Everywhere one turned in Viejo San Juan one would see stray cats, lazing in the shade of a palm tree or a bush, grooming themselves in a doorway, climbing a tree or simply gazing soulfully out at the water. Despite whatever other quirks they may have, since my first visit to the island 15 years ago, I have always been impressed by the care and gentleness with which Puerto Ricans approached stray animals, and these were no different. An organization, Save A Gato, ran a trap-neuter-release programme and many people in the neighborhood virtually adopted this or that collection of cats, feeding them and placing water out for them, as they lived their gentle lives and - a salutary impact - kept the mouse and rat population of the neighborhood at bay.
I finished my book about Puerto Rico - When the Sky Fell: Hurricane Maria and the United States in Puerto Rico - in a little apartment on the corner of Calle de la Cruz and Calle Sol - and covered the verano boricua, the wrenching and hopeful nonstop protests over the summer of 2019 that eventually succeeded in ousting then-Governor Ricardo Rosselló from office as tens of thousands of people crowded the neighborhood’s narrow lanes, demanding change and accountability from the island’s politicians.
When the pandemic hit and the liveliness of Viejo San Juan came to an abrupt halt, I began feeding two different groups of cats myself, one that congregated outside on the terrace of the Beta-Local nonprofit on Calle Sol and another who made their home on a narrow stretch of Callejón del Hospital. Over the years, I got to know some of the personalities of the local cats, as well.
There was a sweet viejito orange cat who I never got around to naming, but who would always bound over to greet me when he saw me pass by and who passed away shortly after I arrived on the island. There was a tabby cat who lived in an abandoned building next to the El Jibarito restaurant named Militar who I would whistle for and who would come leaping down the stairs behind a locked gate and then squeeze through its bars before I lifted him into my arms. There was another sweet tabby named Mimi, who waiting for me outside my door in the morning and who I fed for the better part of two years until she was hit by a car (I tried to coax her in many times, but she liked the street life). There was Midnight Rambler, a fluffy black and white cat who lived on Beta-Local’s terrace. There was another who lived in an abandoned lot on Calle San Sebastian, barely able to walk but who would hobble over when I put food down for him. You couldn’t help but feel there were little souls gazing out at you from their eyes.
The cats were - and are - as much part of Viejo San Juan as the cobblestones themselves.
As the pandemic progressed and then tapered off, the neighborhood began to change. One by one, my boricua neighbors began to move out in search of cheaper rents, and many of the dwellings they once called home either consumed by high–wealth migrants (many of them involved with the crypto currency industry) or quickly flipped and remodeled into Airbnbs or other short-term rentals, the vast majority owned by individuals or corporations not based on the island. In the last apartment building I lived in, I was the only long term tenant, with all the rest of the units given over to short-term rentals. Eventually, unable to secure any permanent accommodation I could afford, I also had to move back to the continental United States, somewhat akin to me to a prison sentence from which I have yet to emerge. But as a consolation prize, two Viejo San Juan street cats, Lola and Sirena, came along to live with me.
Last autumn, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service (NPS) - which oversees the Castillo San Felipe del Morro, the sprawling iconic Spanish colonial military fortification that greets visitors to the neighborhood - announced its intention to trap and remove the cats that live along the Paseo del Morro path around the fort. The felines, which laze on rocks and in the undergrowth along the path frequently feature in tourist’s photos of their visits to the island. Completely ignoring the calls of residents - the people who live in the neighborhood and value the presence of the cats there - the NPS under Director Charles Sams are now saying the removal of the cats could begin as early as October and last for up to six months, with the request for quote - the process by which the NPS is soliciting contractors to submit bids to take away the cats (someone's pocket will get lined, you can be sure) - to be completed at the beginning of September. One of the main arguments of the NPS - that these sweet street cats are somehow disturbing tourists - is, as alluded to above, a complete lie. The NPS - from its perch in Washington, DC - lecturing Puerto Ricans about what is and isn’t the appropriate “cultural landscape” for their island also hasn’t sat well.
It’s hard to think of a crueler or more stupid use of resources on an island where a recent report from the World Bank suggested maternal mortality rates have climbed from 21 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2011 to 34 deaths per 100,000 in 2020, where some 294 bridges are in an advanced state of deterioration and where a shortage of access to chemotherapies has severely impacted cancer patients, with medical professionals warning that the inaccessibility of treatments will lead to a higher risk of death from the disease. Cats are welcome parts of the community in cities around the world like Istanbul, Fès, Rio de Janeiro, Athens and Rome, but apparently Viejo San Juan must deprived of their companionship and further sterilized and banalized. The city’s mayor, Miguel Romero of the pro-statehood Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP), has been viturally absent on the issue, and has left the zone to be marked by decay and the selling off of more and more of the city to real estate speculators, block by block.
No one in Viejo San Juan asked for, wants or supports the removal of the cats along the Paseo del Morro. The move to seize them is just another example of the longstanding policy of the federal government of the United States of treating the people of Puerto Rico as subjects rather than citizens. The cats have been present in the neighborhood long before the National Park Service and, indeed, long before the presence of the United States on the island.
If you have a moment, I would ask you to contact the following actors in this depressing drama, and to voice your opposition to this planned purge of one of the most iconic features of Viejo San Juan:
National Park Service (202) 208-6843
San Juan National Historic Site Phone: 787-729-6960
https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/contactus.htm
With so much senseless ugliness and cruelty in the world, the cats of Viejo San Juan have always been, to me, at least, reminders of simplicity and gentleness and grace. In the words of Walt Whitman, they are “so placid and self-contain'd…Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.”
Maybe there is no place in the “new” Viejo San Juan for such creatures, but I hope there is, and and I hope we can save them.
May Changó watch over and protect the cats of Old San Juan.