The Cat-Man of Zagreb'

There are lousy people in this world. Sometimes it’s better to focus on the Humanity in the “little people”

I had taken my wife on a trip down the Istrian Peninsula. I wanted to show her some of the places where I had worked and traveled when it was still known by the name Jugoslavia. In Zagreb I used to frequent a restaurant that made Jugoslavian srvapčiči (pronounced ‘ser-VAP-chi-chi’.) a type of spiced sausage on a roll.

Over to our left there was a public toilet (always a good thing to scope out in a foreign country) and next to it was a large metal four-wheeled dolly. On the dolly were stacked a lot of flattened cardboard boxes. All around the dolly were cats. Lots of cats. A strange little man approached the dolly with a large can in his hand. His appearance was quite odd. He had a huge, long gray beard and moustache. Despite the warm weather, he was wearing several layers of clothing, topped off with a green rubber rain-coat, giving him a gnome-like shape. On his head he wore a tall, dome-like cap. When I saw him, my first impression was that I was watching one of the ‘Elbonians’ from the cartoon ‘Dilbert.’ 

He went to the dolly and took some squares of cardboard from the pile. He wiped it with his hand. Then he did something I had not seen done before, or since. He opened the can …with NO can-opener !

He tapped the edge of the can gently and methodically, on the steel edge of the dolly, slowly turning it as he tapped. Then it dawned on me what he was doing. He was creating metal-fatigue in the rim of the can. Sure enough, the lid eventually popped loose, and he carefully taps equal amounts of what I now   realized was cat-food, onto four squares of card-board, which served as dishes. These he placed on the ground where they were immediately surrounded by dozens of cats, each apparently knowing its spot.

While the cats were eating, we saw the little man looking around as though he had lost something. He looked very disturbed, as he looked around the shrubbery that surrounded square. Then he stopped and bent down. He had found his missing cat, where it had apparently died of old age. He picked it up and carried it to a place near a wall and dug a shallow grave with a sharp piece of shale. We watched the sad little funeral from our bench. 

I had seen a small stall that sold pet food when we had been looking for the restaurant. We went back and bought six large cans of cat-food, then went back and bought some more srvapčiči to go. We went back and gave the strange little man the bag of cat-food, the srvapčiči and a folded wad of Croatian Kuna bills. He is one of the people in this world who really count. To Hell with the damned generals !

Jack Hayes