The Cats of Kotor by Quinn

When we first anchored at Kotor, Montenegro, we had no idea just HOW MUCH these people worshipped the stray cats in their streets, and just cats in general. At every shirt and trinket shop there were tons of things with cats all over them. But of course, Mom immediately thought, “Let’s go for an uphill hike to see a castle and the small church the soldiers would pray at while being shot at!” At that, most of us groaned. We decided to do that later in the day and in the meantime, we were going to see a little bit of Kotor. 

Once we started walking around, everyone realized that you couldn’t even take more or less five steps without seeing one or two cats. Mom and Dad decided that we were going to continue wondering after the forced uphill walk and we should bring lunch. We wondered around until we found a sign that said something about sandwiches, but it was a letdown. We had to continue walking (with cats still everywhere) until we found a sign that said, “Something Bite Montenegro, Fast Food Sandwiches and Beer and Drinks,” (well, it more or less said that). We decided to go there and we got (after much deciding) 2 ham and pickles and stuff sandwiches for Mom and Dad, and 3 prosciutto, cheese and tomato sandwiches for Gherty, Che, and I. We also got Cokes which we hadn’t had before.

           After buying lunch, we began our forced uphill march. It was totally a march, and it wasn’t only like a quarter mile. There were small steps made of rock on the left side and just a rocky path on the right. After a little bit, I decided it was much easier to use the steps. We walked for a little bit until we found a rest about halfway up. We stayed there for a few minutes to get the water out of Dad’s backpack. Afterwards, we continued going up until we got to the church thing I mentioned earlier. We decided to eat lunch there, but the prosciutto was smoked so it tasted bad. While we were eating, there was a pregnant cat that wanted some of our food and we had to keep shooing it away. Eventually we gave it some bread and after the meal, we made a shrine with the leftover sandwiches and the cat ate them. Mom asked if we wanted to continue going up but nobody really did. 

           Afterwards, we went down and saw an old dog that was rubbing against us. While Gherty, Che, and I waited for Mom and Dad to finally make it down, we realized that across the street there were about 6 cats on a balcony thing. Gherty noticed that there was a cat in a flower pot so we decided to see if Mom would notice. We told her to look at the flower pots carefully and after we told her a few more things, she saw it. We decided to go shirt shopping after that and I ended up getting a shirt that said “I’m with stupid à.”

       Mom and Dad told us to go back to the boat by ourselves and come get them with the dinghy when they called us. When they finally did call, I got in the dinghy and untied it, but it wouldn’t start. I finally just used the oars to get back to Madame Geneva and we told Mom and Dad the problem. After a while, we found out that because of the rain, The Britanic (our dinghy) had water in the fuel. After a few pulls on the starting thing by Che, it finally worked and I got Mom and Dad. 

           That’s all! Stay tuned I guess, Quinn 🙂