Most people know I love animals and people that know me a little bit better know what my favorite animal is... the cat. Since I was a young girl I collected things of cats, my favorite characters where cats, all my birthday cards always featured cats and I loved our housecat; Whitey.
I have decided to dedicate this blog to all the animals I meet in Ecuador.
A lot of people have pets in Montañita. You don’t always notice they actually have an owner, because most of them just walk around on the streets trying to get some extra food at restaurants or just want a belly rub. In the cabañas we have a cat named Pirata, because she only has 1 eye. And today this creature showed up. First thing she did this morning was jump on my lap and started purring. It is impossible to ignore such cute things.
At the school we have this couple, brother and sister. The first day they were just hanging around in the outside classroom meowing their little asses of. You couldn’t really touch them; just the brown cat kinda showed he liked some enamorada. The second day you could already pet them. Now after a week, they meow like crazy in the morning, then they cool down and go to sleep at the persons lap who is getting Spanish lessons. They hang around school all day, napping in the little garden, playing with each other, trying to climb the whiteboard where teachers are trying to write. Everybody thinks they’re cute, so people let them hang around. Just some teachers are trying to get rid of them. But nothing really works. They don’t get scared when you throw stuff at them, even if you bring them all the way down the stairs (they are pretty high) they will be back after 5 minutes. Because they are still young I also don’t really know what to do with them. I don’t give them any food, because then they will definitely never leave. But I do cuddle and play with them from time to time. Who could resist them?
There is another cat that lives downstairs from the school; he is really shy of humans. And his best friend is a rooster. It is so cute, they are always foraging together. And you often see the cat rub up to the rooster.
It was hard to get a picture of them, because the cat always runs away (left: rooster and right: cat)
This is Pirata, the cat of the cabañas, she is a whole different story. She is super cute, only begs for food if you offer it, doesn’t bite or scratch and feeds herself. She lives of mice and gecko’s so you don’t have to feed her. She is even pretty picky with the food you give her. She just has a soft spot for the brown bread from the bakery in town. Once she finds out you have it, she will try to open your container in the kitchen to steel it. But the solution for this is super easy, just make sure your bread isn’t lying around and make sure your container is locked. What she really needs of us humans is just love. She loves to sleep in or under our bed and just cuddle.
The other cat however I am not sure of. She is still really young, so I don’t know if she can find her own food. I am not going to feed her, because I will leave in 6 weeks. I did this before; I don’t want to leave a cat behind who is depending of someone who leaves. She is really sweet and well behaved, but she still jumps on the table what you can’t have if people are having dinner there.
Oohh.. I have so many dilemmas, I just want to keep them all and take care of them but I can’t!
So these are my 5 Montañita cats, my second favorite animal are dogs. In Montañita you see way more dogs than cats on the streets. As I said before, they often have owner, but they like to wonder around by themselves as well. I think on my way from school to the cabañas if I walk through town I see about 15 dogs. My favorite dog must be Molly. She lives near the cabañas at the bike spondylus rental guy. She is usually lying in front of his reception, or at the side of the road. She is the biggest fan of belly rubs, once she sees you she will start wagging her tail and turn on her back to get her belly rubbed. One day we were at Pigro for family dinner and a blond dog walked in and started asking for attention. A few hours before I saw Molly had a tick on her chest, so I checked to see if this was the same dog and it was! She doesn’t listen to her name, so calling her didn’t really help. She didn’t even really beg for food, she just wanted to get petted.
2 weeks ago Joris and I were still recovering from the flu. That Saturday we wanted to get out of our room, but couldn’t go surfing yet. We decided to take a walk on the beach and go up to the point. This is the point between Montañita and Olon and you have a really nice view atop of the hill. When we got to the beach this blond dog was playing in the ocean. She kind of started to walk with us, but still staying in the ocean. Once we left the beach to walk up, she met 2 other dogs. They happily started to follow us as well. So now we had 3 dogs following us. Once we got to the point we sat there for a while. I thought they would get bored and leave, but no, they stayed with us. They started giving us real bad vertigo when they started to hunt for geckos on the edge of the cliff. They geckos kept jumping off, and they wanted to follow them. Luckily none of the dogs actually jumped off. After some time we decided to walk down to Olon. We had to walk on the side of a busy road, so we were already kinda scared for ourselves walking there, but the dogs didn’t seem to care. Once we got to Olon we decided to walk over the rocks on the side of the cliff and look for shells. The dogs got stuck a few times, but they seemed to enjoy this adventurous walk. When we got back to the beach, we realized the supermarket in Olon is bigger than in Montañita so we should do shopping here. Even when we walked into the supermarket they tried to follow us. We had to force them out. With all our groceries we didn’t walk all the way back again, so we took the bus. Joris was said the dogs couldn’t follow us anymore and we hoped they could still find the way back. The next day we were on the beach of Montañita again and who did we saw, the first dog that started following us.
These are just the animals I met that are more homely.
I’ve also seen other creatures. On the beach the other day I saw a sea turtle, it was really said though. He probably had been caught in a fishing line and died and washed up to shore.
:( the turtle who partied to hard
A cool phenomenon that happens every day right after sunset is all these small birds that fly back to town and all sit on the electricity wires in the centre of town. It is not only a cool sight to see them all flying back, but it is also cool to see them just sit there all together on those lines. They make a lot of noise and make sure you don’t stand underneath them, they might poop on your head!
On the way to school I always cross the bridge. For some reason iguanas like to hang out there. Especially when the sun is out they are all chilling out there. You can feed them as well; they really love lettuce and the leftover of your apple.
The cabañas are a big tropical paradise; it is full of flowers and fruits. This attracts a lot of tropical creatures. Such as colorful birds, scary spiders, scorpions and the other day there was this big stick insect on the table when I was having lunch.
It is hard to take pictures of birds on your iphone, but I succeeded a few times. The only bird that is not possible to photograph is the Humming bird
I forgot 1 animal, this animal is quite prominent here. It wakes people up in the morning, it disrupts classes by being loud and apparently they adopt cats for pets.. and they really don’t care
