When Sue and I moved to Spain in 2007 we had only the haziest of ideas of what our lives would be like. We were leaving behind jobs, friends and the certainties of life to step into a waking dream.
In our minds' eyes we imagined our days together: fresh bread with Serrano ham and Manchego cheese for breakfast followed by a stroll down to the seaside and a leisurely paddle in the shallows. We would stop off for a drink in a café in town before ambling back home to plan lunch, stopping en route to practice our Spanish on our neighbours.
These are the everyday dreams of most people of our age who move to Spain. For some the attraction is simply lazing on the beach for half the day, for others it's playing golf, it may even be walking in the sierras or picking fresh oranges from your trees; whatever reasons we have, it's the attraction of a future life without stress or responsibilities which draws us here.
And then we decided to adopt a cat.
We've had cats throughout most of our 26 years together. Sue's first cat, Tara, a tortoiseshell of uncertain temper came from the Rollright Stones near Chipping Norton. After she died we got Sophie and Edie, two moggies who loved us but hated each other.
When they died at a ripe old age we decided to live without cats for a couple of years. We were already talking about moving to Spain and it seemed unfair to uproot a cat and transport it to another country where it didn't speak the language.
Shortly after we settled into our new house we started going out for a walk each night looking for a cat. We had already asked around if anyone had a kitten for adoption. We had been to the vets to find out if they knew of any stray cats in the vicinity. With what we know know, it's little short of amazing that there was a shortage of cats in Alcossebre that summer. So when we first saw a young ginger cat sitting by a workman's hut on a building site cadging sausages from the night-watchman it seemed to fill a cat-shaped hole in each of us.
First we had to entice our cat-to-be away from the night-watchman; he would be there and gone once the work was over while we were a better long-term bet for a young cat on the make. Our cat-to-be had been named by the watchman: El Rojo - the red one, and, for the next few weeks El Rojo could pick and choose where dinner came from: canned tuna at our house one day, building-site sausages the following day.
We were clear about two things - El Rojo would be our cat, and as El Rojo was ginger, hence a tom, there would be no kittens to complicate matters. We would be responsible cat-owners, we would get him snipped and innoculated and integrate him into our new life next to the Mediterranean.
By the time we worked out that he was a she Tango had worked her way into our lives (El Rojo wasn't going to work for us). Although she was a she, we were pretty certain she didn't have a litter of kittens stashed away. As the days went past, and the rains came Tango spent an increasing amount of time in the house. When she occasionally disappeared she could usually be found near her old stamping ground, the watchman's hut. Either Tango was the most feckless mother going or there was no litter stashed away out of sight.
So the weeks passed by and our complacency grew until one day she appeared with two hissing, spitting balls of fur in tow. I was in London at the time so Sue had to deal with this new and surprising turn of events by herself.
Looking back on it now, I'm not sure Tango even meant for her kittens to become part of our household. She had brought them to a nearby garden, not to our house, and was happily nursing them there in the middle of a rain-storm. Once the kittens had been scooped up and transplanted into dryer surroundings Tango simply accepted matters and got on with the task of feeding her small litter indoors instead of outside.
From one day to the next our lives had suddenly become much more complicated. Of one thing we were sure, we were not going to have three cats; one was quite sufficient. We would take the unwanted pair to the vets for a check-up, take the cutest picture we could of the pair of them and put together a poster in Spanish and English offering them to a good home.
And that's what we did.
