Roof Cats & The Esso Station Dog

It sounds like a frickin’ poltergeist, my housemate John says. That’s some scary shit.

We are sitting at the table in the courtyard eating food from one of the chicken ladies on the street. John is the person to go get food with - he’s been here since October, speaks flawless Spanish and works with a primarily Nica organization. He was the one who showed me that the chicken ladies - women who set out huge grills on the sidewalk at night and sell food - have more than chicken. So I probably shouldn’t call them chicken ladies anymore.

Upstairs the yowling and growling continues, creepy and unrelenting. It’s one of the roof cats, a black one. It’s gotten particularly bold and when it smells food it starts making scary noises, probably to scare the other roof cats away. Once we leave it’ll come in and knock the garbage over to go through it for the scraps.

A horrible gurgling noise is coming from the stairs. It’s not even waiting for us to finish. It’s come off the roof and is hiding in the stairwell.

There’s whole colonies of feral cats that live along the rooftops in Granada. All the houses are connected so the cats just go up and down the street. Most houses, ours included, have courtyards in the middle with open air kitchens. The roof cats exist off the garbage, steal anything left on counters, fight and scream and yowl all night. You can hear them running back and forth on the clay rooftops.

Lest anyone think these could be made into happy little pets, don’t. These things are terrifying. Feral cats in the states are scary enough to handle - their Nicaraguan counterparts are monsters. Generation after generation of them have never been touched and they’re tough enough to fight off domestic cats, dogs that people might have in the courtyards they raid. No one is making friends with these things. Believe me.

In the past Casa Lupita has trapped some roof cats in other neighborhoods, brought them in and fixed them and re-released them. If you kill them more just come in to take their place. If you can fix them and release them, it mellows out some of the fighting, the amount of kittens running around. It also lessens the likelihood that it will contract FIV. Neuter them and they live longer.

It’s time for the roof cats of Calle Santa Lucia to be emasculated. Starting with the snarling black poltergeist on the steps.

The next night I bust out the one remaining humane trap Casa Lupita has - the other one got stolen. I explain to the other people in the house what I’m doing. Allen has tuna for lunch and donates part of the can to the cause.

I stay up late that night, don’t set the trap until around midnight to minimize the amount of time whatever winds up in it will have to stay in there. By tomorrow night it will be back on the rooftops, just a little mellower. We have a dark little alcove under the counter and I put the trap there, bait it, cover it with a towel.

Twenty minutes later I am lying in bed when I hear the sound of the garbage being knocked over. Five minutes after that I hear the snap of the trap being triggered.

We have a winner. Ding ding ding.

I throw on some clothes and go out to look. It’s like Christmas morning - everyone who is still up wants to see what’s in the box. When I reach for the towel it swipes out a paw, tries to get me. Hunched in the back of the trap, it snarls and hisses. One of my housemates notes that it’s smaller than he thought it would be. Everything is smaller here - animals, people. We recover it with the towel, go to bed. That night the other roof cats get into a screaming match on the roof. The one in the cage never makes a noise.

Early the next morning I call Toni, let her know I got one. She and Nick meet me at the clinic. Since the last time I was here Toni has not only been trained to assist in surgery, she can do neuters. The cat has mellowed significantly, probably from being awake in the cage all night, terrified. Nick holds him while she does an intramuscular shot of sedatives. Five minutes later he’s out cold.

The surgery itself literally takes minutes. Despite how tough it is it’s a young cat, barely an adult. Afterwards she nicks a corner of it’s ear off so if we trap it again we know it’s already done and will just let it go.

We put it back in the trap and leave it, trap and all, in an upper kennel to recover from the anesthesia. When I come back tonight it is awake, crouched in the back of the trap, furious. I start to walk home with it to release it but neighborhood kids keep running out to see it, trying to stick their fingers in the cage, ignoring my pleas of 'no no no, es gato malo'. I have to get a cab.

In the courtyard I open the cage. It hesistates a second and darts out, up the stairs to the second floor and then back to the rooftop. I rebait the trap, put it back in the alcove.

Whoever was fighting on the roof last night might like some chicken.

The Dog

Lilly is in the States and the woman she’s left in charge, a Nica woman who lived in the States for a while, comes over to chat. You hear about that dog up at the Esso station?

I haven’t but she tells me. Apparently it belongs to a family that owns a little refreshment stand next door at the stop for the Managua bus. A few nights back some guy brought a pit bull, a fighting dog, over. For amusement he loosed the pit bull on the family’s dog. It tore it’s jaw open, busted it’s teeth out.

It’s horrible, she tells me. The poor thing.

While Toni is doing the neuter I tell her about it. We might be able to help, we have some antibiotics. It’s too late to stitch it, since it happened a few days ago and the wound needs to drain. But someone should go have a look.

We aren’t going to bring this dog in - it’s owned - we’ll just see if we can offer assistance.

The only thing that qualifies me for this errand is a deep and abiding love of fountain soda, hard to find in Nicaragua but available at the Esso station. The Esso station is an odd thing to begin with - it’s actually an On The Run convenience store, the exact same ones we have in Colorado and it looks exactly the same as one in the States, complete with air conditioning, soda fountain, American style fast food, everything. Weird.

I walk out later that day, about a mile walk. I get my soda and look around but I don’t see the dog. The Esso station is on the main road to Managua and Rivas and it’s Saturday so it’s packed. I walk around the neighborhood, don’t see any dogs at all. I’m about to walk back home when I notice someone tending to the perfect American looking lawn around the store. In my horrible Spanish I explain who I am and ask if he knows about the dog. He immediately knows what I’m talking about and hurries me over to the stand, a little wooden shack that sells some bottles of Central American soda, some snacks, but is primarily a place to lock bicycles up. Twenty yards from On The Run, a universe away.

More horrible Spanish, more explaining - I’m a veterinary nurse from a clinic here, we heard what happened here, we wanted to know if you needed help. We might have medicine or something. I need to take a picture of the dog to show it to my coworkers. Immediately the whole family mobs me. Pobrecito Lolo, the kids, say. Their poor dog. They thank me for coming.

Someone is sent for the dog. It’s a typical Nica dog of no determinate breed, medium sized and prick eared. I don’t see anything wrong with it until the man picks it up. And then it’s horrible.

There is no actual open wound left, but the jaw is broken and just hangs, leaving the dog’s mouth open permanently. Most of the teeth are gone. It happened a week ago, the man tells me. They took him to the vet and are got some antibiotics. He shows me the bottle and I write the name of the drug down.


An infection we could treat. This I don’t know. I have no idea. I take some pictures.

I ask if he can eat or drink. The man answers but I have trouble understanding. I don’t know that I was clear enough when I asked- my accent makes it hard for Nicas to understand me - and he’s talking quickly. Something about water and milk. While we’re talking the dog manages to pick up a bag of garbage. I get the feeling he can drink and pick things up but can’t chew or swallow food because of this jaw.

To the best of my ability I explain that I don’t know if we can do anything but either me or one of my co-workers will return in a day or two to talk to them. We don’t have a vet but we will have one in two weeks and maybe he can do something.

The vet they took Lolo to doesn’t do surgery and even if could do it, I doubt the family could afford it. The dog is eight years old, ancient for a Nica dog, and the family obviously cares about it. They are furious about what happened. We called the police, the owner tells me, they did nothing, nothing.

I go find Nick at the email café and show him the pictures. He’s stumped, too. He doesn’t know if Dr. Tom would even be able to do anything about it. But he’ll go talk to them, explain to them that if they can keep it alive until then they should bring it to us. He’ll also tell them that if they can’t they should bring it to us anyway to humanely euthanize. It’s not a cruel thing, it’s a poverty thing: if you can’t save something here most people will just slit it’s throat. Not a nice way to go. It’s not done to be mean it’s just the quickest way most Nicas know to kill something. We can at least do a humane euth if need be, a barbituate overdose.

You do what you can, even if it doesn’t seem like much.

To end on a happier note, Freda’s puppy continues to do well. It’s not quite walking yet but it wobbles around, dragging itself like a little black and white seal. We are all pretty cynical but we are all enchanted by the chubby little thing.