Caturday - Street Cats Pinos del Valle - Spain

Where we live, we are quite lucky to have a few ladies take care of the street cats because they honestly all look extremely healthy and most of them are super social. They respond when you call them, run towards you with their tales up and often start chatting to you or even demand cuddles. I keep falling in love with a few of our street cats in our own street, they often relax in our community garden or in those of the neighbours. Currently we have another momma cat with two kittens.

Recently my boyfriend just managed to save one of the kittens as it was falling out of a tree where mommy cat put them. He or she wouldn't have survived. Momma was hissing, of course but a few hours later when they went to check they already saw momma cat with her kittens, thankfully. At least she's safe in our garden and a few kind ladies in our street take care of the cats so I'm sure when the time is right, they will be captured and sterilized/castrated.

Last weekend we stayed in Pinos del Valle which is in Granada in the valley of Lecrin. It's a wonderful area, upon entering the valley, we felt like entering a holiday park, it was stunning. Although the total drive there was 1,5 hours, we didn't have to drive long to Pinos del Valle upon entering the area. Meanwhile, we enjoyed the views, because they were very worth it!

It was a bit doubtful where the parking was exactly, even though they sent us instructions, so when we parked we decided to first check the apartment by foot and then pick up our stuff from the car. I was lucky because my boyfriend and daughter did the work, haha.

The first thing we noticed when parking were all the street cats chilling on the roof of the houses. This Siamese beauty was the first cat we noticed but the pictures were taken the next day because I didn't have my camera in my hand when we first arrived. I think she's stunning! But as you can see she surely seems to be expecting kittens, which is sad because it means more kittens will end up on the streets.

I would have loved to take her home if we didn't already have 2 cats and a place to seperate the third as usually they carry parasites, so we learned by fostering kittens. It's not smart to put them together right away, also for the safety of our lovely ladies and we have no room that is suitable to place an adult cat in plus the litter box and food and water. It's just not possible, which is sad because our apartment is quite big compared to the previous one. I would have loved to help this lady, but hopefully someone else will, at least when the kittens are born.

Although there were other cats more interested in making contact, this one wasn't very social, maybe because she just doesn't like people in general or maybe she doesn't fancy strangers in her village, who knows. She didn't mind sitting there and watching for a bit but when she had too much attentiojn and us trying to call her, she decided it was time to move on again.

Although I'm quite used to seeing street cats all around since moving to Spain, I mean we helped quite a few ourselves by feeding them every day, even when feral, we still made sure they had water 24/7 and food most of the day, I also know you can't help them all. Many people are contributing here though by doing their part by fostering cats or kittens but foster homes are overloaded constantly. There are just too many cats and it was nice to see that moving to this area back then meant we saw the street cats in better health and much more sociable. Seeing them in poor conditions broke my heart constantly.

This is what I saw in Pinos del Valle too, many cats in poor condition, almost every cat we saw (except here on this particular roof) was looking for food in garbage bins at several locations around the village, this makes me think most of them are hungry and not taken care of.

I hope I'm wrong and that I just happened to saw a few exceptions, because in the end we were there just two days so I can't be sure. It's just that I care so much about these poor babies on the street, I hope that they have some people caring for them as there are people here caring for these street cats.

Are there many street cats where you live?

Pictures are mine taken with my Sony RX10 III camera..