Nafplio, Greece
Gyrometer: 20
The hugest cat in the world just waddled under my hotel balcony. In this nation rife with scrawny strays, I am feeling traumatized by the sight.
The cat was approximately the size of me at age seven. It strutted determinedly down the road, turning right at a cement staircase that leads into the center of town. I am worried. I am wondering how this cat could have gotten so huge, and the only answer I can come up with is it must be eating the other cats.
The streets of every Greek village are crawling with felines. Many people refer to them as “wild” though they are actually quite tame in most cases. Tourists sometimes pet them and even pick them up.
I refrain from this practice because my love for kitties is superceded by my phobia of rabies. I have, however, been known to toss the cats bits of chicken souvlaki when restaurant owners aren't looking.
At my birthday celebration, which you forgot about, in the village of Kardamili a few days ago, a young kitten crashed the party and made repeated attempts to get to the tzatziki. Tzatziki is a yogurt-cucumber-garlic dip. It hardly seemed like anything a cat should or would ever want to eat. So we kept the tzatziki away from the infiltrator, but a few bottles of Mythos beer later, our guard was down, and the next thing we knew, he had his front paws on the table and his tongue deep in the tzatziki.
Figuring that his other dietary option was the lizards in the nearby hills, we decided the tzatziki wouldn’t do him any harm. And since he had now drooled all over it, we decided not to fight him for it. These kitties live tough lives and, we hoped, develop iron-clad stomach linings.
But back to the fat cat. Here’s the thing: Greece has a population of approximately 10.9 million people and 28.3 quadzillion stray cats. The cats eek out an existence dining on the aforementioned lizards, other small creatures, and table scraps from human slaves like me. They get by, but they never get as big as the Cat Who Ate Nafplio, which sauntered past a few minutes ago. I can’t confirm for sure what he’s been eating, but I sense it isn’t just gyros, and I don’t think Atkins is going to do him any good.
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