Casa di Rosella e tre catto, Jesse, Surya e Fatto Catto.
This week I am settled in Milano in Rosella's apartment with her three cats.
Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings she teaches at high school. She is not very happy about that and looks forward to the day she can retire.
It is very easy here. The supermarket is three minutes away and it's two minutes to
the Metro, San Agostino. The trams rattle past outside the window, clanging day and night.
I am sitting at her computer on an antique wooden chair from Venice with a knotted leg! The chair, not me! The computer sits on a huge desk with solid claw feet.
The apartment belonged to her parents and is filled with treasures; old paintings,maps, antiques, and objects from primitive societies that Rosella and her parents collected, including musical intruments and some ferocious looking weapons. A high stud and tall windows, dark polished wood floors and walls of books.
There are two bathrooms. The Maldives bathroom is a wonderland of sea and fishes. (Not real of course.)
The other bathroom/laundry is also the cats bathroom. They never go outside! Two of them have never lived outside, but the youngest, Jesse was once a stray cat and sits staring down from the balcony with a yearning look. She has her own potplant, a terra cotta dish with real dirt (as opposed to cat litter) and a scruffy tuft of Mondo grass! All three are very clean and tidy (and use their litter boxes very daintily.)
Everything in Italy is a little bit scruffy and dirty but it is wonderful. In 2005 I am sure there was a lot more dirt and graffitti everywhere in Milan. Everything seems more stylish and spruced up but maybe that is a reflection on how I was feeling last time, jet lagged and exhausted by being thrown into a new country.
Now I am finding it easier to adjust and am a lot more relaxed about it all.
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