The Isle of Cats

Reina Isabel Dos, our Anglo-American-Argentine cat, irreverently named in time for Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee, seemed as much at ease on a gritty rooftop hunting pigeons as she did on the edge of the duvet in San Telmo and later, on the condo balcony in Miami Beach. It’s a quality about cats – they make themselves at home wherever they are.

We adopted Isabel Dos from the Buenos Aires city botanical garden. Although the hundreds of cats who roamed those grounds could count on a troupe of cat fanciers to feed them, they experienced the worst of the cold weather, the rainy nights and the indignities of having to share a space with opossum. The volunteers at the park said Isabel (formerly Nacha) lived in the park for as long as they could remember. Her behavior, for a while, reflected this.

She eventually settled into Buenos Aires’ cultural underground in San Telmo with grace and vivacity. When I relocated for work to Miami, she learned to curl up beside me on the king-size bed at the Red Roof Inn near the airport and later, to walk along the wall of the balcony overlooking Biscayne Bay like a confident tourist on Havana’s Malecon.

After Isabel’s brief but fatal encounter with FELV, a feline autoimmune-deficiency disorder, we decided to drive from Miami to Key West, over the seven-mile bridge with water on all sides, to the remotest tip of the U.S., and to a house uniquely known for its feline inhabitants on what residents used to fondly call the Isle of Cats. Read about our trip to the cat-crazy home of American writer Ernest Hemingway in my essay for Curbed here.