Living ashore has been quite a challenge for Smurfy: making feline friends (and foes), climbing trees, roaming the property at night–everything here is a first for him. We usually take a walk together early in the morning, then he spends the day sleeping in our hotel room, in the evening we go for another walk and after dinner he disappears for the night–running the mysterious errands only felines know about.
Fortunately the many local and stray cats that have their territories here get along quite well and it’s fascinating to watch their behaviour, relationships and hierarchies. Smurfy has a few acquaintances that get a casual nose sniff when passing, two friends he plays with and a few foes that get howled at, but fights are rare. It probably helps that Smurfy is larger than most of them (due to his high protein diet from kitten on) and suprisingly good-natured towards other felines (we thought he’d be a bully, given how often he used to pick fights with our hands and legs).
For some funny reason the numerous dogs that live here or just cross the property, are all terrified of cats and make a big detour when they see a cat from afar. Smurfy immediately caught on to that concept and gets a kick out of chasing dogs–no matter how big they are.
