One day a cat decided to call the Pizzeria “home”. I wasn’t thrilled, I had never particularly liked cats and was still North American enough to feel that animals didn’t belong in a restaurant. Mac pointed out that the cat would be a deterrent for rats and mice and he had a point, we DID need a mouser in the place. It was proving impossible to keep the coconut rats out, they could gnaw their way through anything, and I for sure preferred cats over rats!
We named our Pizzeria pet Franchesca. She was a pretty calico cat with a sleek multi-colored coat, and she started behaving like the Queen of Sheba. She knew she was beautiful, and would strike poses on the wall as people mounted the steps to the restaurant. Few people could resist stroking her as they passed, and she became very popular with the regular customers. I had worried that she would bother our patrons but no-one seemed to mind her presence in the dining room.
Francesca was a professional mouser and she kept the rodent population down. I would lock her in the kitchen when I closed up at night so that any coconut rat gaining access would be doing so at its own risk. I had to be careful in the mornings – if Franchesca had caught a rat during the night she would leave it right inside the kitchen door where I couldn’t fail to miss it, especially if I stepped on it. Soon I didn’t have to worry, the rats knew she was there and kept their distance.
Franchesca and our golden lab Sheba just barely tolerated each other. Sheba always accompanied me to work in the early hours of the morning and didn’t like the cat. After a few painful scratches Sheba learned to stand back as Franchesca emerged haughtily through the kitchen door, tail high and twitching, to take up her post on the wall.
I remember a night when Franchesca, through no fault of her own, created a huge ruckus in the dining room. A large table of German tourists were seated at a table along the front, eating lobster pizza and drinking copious amounts of beer. The man at the head of the table scooped Franchesca onto his lap and tied his napkin around her neck. When he set her on the table to eat from his plate a Bequian from a near-by table reacted explosively, snatching the man’s plate and throwing it down into the garden. He was upset to see an animal licking a plate in an establishment he frequented regularly, and he cursed the tourists in language I could only hope they didn’t understand! After that episode many locals asked for paper napkins in case the cloth ones had been tied around the neck of my cat …. at least they didn’t request paper plates as well!
Franchesca needed to be spayed, kittens were something I didn’t need nor want! We would have to wait for the arrival of Gus, the veterinarian from Barbados, as there were no vets in the country at that time. Franchesca DID have kittens before the Vet came, and to this day I am embarrassed about it. She somehow gained access to the Green Boley Boutique next door, and gave birth on top of a pile of Rita Williams’s hand-sewn and meticulously folded clothing.. Sorry Rita!!!