The Cats of Rome

by Pamela Sargent

(Autumn, 1993)

I went back to the Colosseum in late afternoon, hoping to catch a glimpse of the cats that had been living there, it was said, since time immemorial. That morning, Alberto, the guide we had hired, had given us a tour of the Forum before leading us past Constantine's Arch to the Colosseum.

The huge stone structure lived up to its name. Viewed from the roof of my hotel, the Colosseum, barely more than a block away, was a giant walled crater dwarfing everything around it. I had gone up to the roof at dawn, to look at the city in the early morning light. There was an unreality about Rome at that hour, in the soft dawn light that muted and blurred stone buildings and tiled roofs, before the increasing noise of the chaotic traffic in the streets below reminded me that I still dwelled in the late twentieth century.

To be in Rome is to feel as though you're in a place where fragments of the past seem to be slipping constantly into the present, or else that the present is merely an illusion covering the bedrock of something much more ancient. Philip K. Dick, while writing his novel Valis, had come to believe (for a while, anyway) that our perceived reality was in fact illusory and that we were all actually still living in ancient Rome. Had he visited Rome at the time he became convinced of this, he would have felt confirmed in his belief.

"Nero used to have his palace on that hill," Alberto had told me and the small group of assorted English-speaking tourists who had pooled their resources to hire him through American Express. He was gesturing at the nearby hill where my hotel stood, which immediately raised my estimation of that hostelry. "But let me assure you that no Christians were killed in the Colosseum here." Alberto was a stocky, balding, expressive middle-aged man with a beard and the general appearance, demeanor, and learning of a university professor. He was in fact a full-time guide, a profession that in Rome requires fluency in foreign languages, several courses in history and art, and official certification. Indeed, anyone acting as a professional guide without the proper certification can be heavily fined.

This strictness about unlicensed guides is a notable contrast to the leniency shown those Romans whose cars are illegally double-parked in practically every street. Alberto explained the ins and outs of illegal parking as he led us to the Forum. Those men we saw lurking near many of the offending vehicles were paid by the cars' owners to be lookouts, and had keys to the cars they were guarding. Their job was to move the cars elsewhere before they could be ticketed and to bribe the polizia and carabinieri to look the other way. "Sounds like Albany," I murmured. "Albany? Where is Albany?" Alberto asked. "Albany, New York," I replied. "Actually, it isn't so bad now, but when I was a kid, drivers could pay the police to ignore illegal parking, and the police would stand there by the curb counting their bribes." Alberto was thunderstruck, even a little defensive of his beloved city. "And I thought only Rome was that corrupt!" he exclaimed with wounded pride.

"I must also point out," Alberto added at the entrance to the Colosseum, "that no Christians died in the Circus Maximus, either. The Circus Maximus was a race track, not a place for such spectacles. The Christians were killed in another place altogether, an arena Nero built that no longer exists." It seemed important to Alberto that we understand this. So much for those scenes with the lions in Quo Vadis.

The heat had been intense that morning, the sun too bright to spend much time exploring the Colosseum's interior, which is why I had gone back later that day. Getting to the Colosseum from my hotel should have required no more than a five-minute walk. But I was dealing with Roman drivers and traffic, and thought it wiser to take a slightly more roundabout route to be sure of crossing roads in safe spots. Thousands of tiny Fiats routinely whizzed down the Viale dei Fori Imperiale, the four- lane highway that runs past the Colosseum, at very high speeds, coming to an abrupt stop only when the lights changed to allow pedestrians to cross. Even then, cars from side roads would enter the highway and zip into turns, threatening anyone in their path. "If you must cross against the traffic," Alberto had warned us earlier, "hold up your hand and walk out, and do not hesitate! The cars may stop only a centimeter from you, but they will stop." This was not entirely accurate. As I quickly discovered, some drivers preferred to keep barreling along and miss you by a centimeter.

Some Japanese tourists were taking photographs outside the Colosseum walls. I went through one arched entrance to see more tourists inside, climbing among the tiers where Romans had once sat to cheer their favorite gladiators. The Romans had also enjoyed flooding the arena to stage mock sea battles with real ships and sailors. The vast space where these games had been played out was now only ruined stone pillars standing amid moss and patches of grass.

"Pam!" a voice above me cried. Someone was calling my name. That had to be my imagination; who would be calling to me here? I recalled an old story about a young woman who, at the turn of the century, had ventured into the Colosseum at high noon on a hot summer's day. She had heard a voice calling out to her in Latin as she fainted; upon regaining consciousness, she had become convinced that Pliny had spoken to her. She had surely been delirious, and maybe I was, too, hearing my name being called. It was still pretty warm inside the ancient arena, where the walls were too high to admit much wind.

"Pam! Pam!" The voice was awfully insistent. I finally looked up to see Betty and Bob, an American couple who had been among those hiring Alberto earlier. They were staying at my hotel, and had latched on to me after learning that we all came from different areas of New York State. Bob waved at me from a high tier. "Come on up and see the cats!"

I climbed the stone steps to find a community of cats, large ones and small, all of them looking somewhat underfed. How did they survive? Could they trace their own lineage back to cats who might have prowled for scraps among gladiators and their fans? Did they now live on morsels given them by tourists who felt sorry for them?

I was wary as I approached, and a bit relieved when most of the cats crept into the shadows or disappeared into whatever secret nooks and crannies existed among the stones. Cute they might be, but I was thinking of fleas and other possible annoyances that overrode their cuteness. Back home, barely a week had gone by without the local newspaper printing a story about the growing incidence of rabies among upstate New York's wild animals; readers were constantly being warned to get their pets vaccinated against the disease. I had heard tales of people fleeing from possibly rabid deer that had wandered into their yards, of other homeowners barricading themselves behind locked doors to escape rabid raccoons rampaging through their kitchens. Entire suburban neighborhoods seemed trapped inside a Stephen King novel. I was beginning to wonder how many rabid animals there might be in Rome. I was pretty certain that the Colosseum cats hadn't had any rabies shots.

"Over there," Bob suddenly muttered. "Better look out." Four children were coming toward us, two boys and two girls, none of them more than ten years old. One girl was carrying a newspaper, and that had put Bob on guard.

Alberto had warned us, in an apologetic tone, about thieves. He had told us to be especially wary of children who were accomplished thieves and pickpockets and who hung around most of the places that attracted tourists. He insisted that all of these children were Gypsies, kept out of school by parents who trained them in larcenous pursuits, and that even more of these Gypsies had come to Rome lately in the wake of political upheavals in Eastern Europe. The modus operandi of these young Oliver Twists and Artful Dodgers was very simple. They would surround their chosen victim, one of them distracting the target by flapping a newspaper around while the others picked pockets and purses. They were very fast with their hands, Alberto had said, capable of unzipping a purse and relieving it of cash and passport in an instant; you might not even know you had been robbed until hours later. Woe betide the careless visitor who didn't keep a tight grip on his belongings and was fooled into thinking the thieves were only cute, playful little kids.

As it happened, I had already seen some young thieves in action on my way over to the Colosseum. About twenty feet ahead of me, three beautiful little girls, long dark hair flying, had rushed a young man wearing a backpack, and one of the girls was waving a telltale newspaper. They surrounded him almost instantly; I thought I saw one small hand darting toward the bottom of his backpack. Never wear a backpack in Rome.

The young man halted. To my horror, he was smiling down at the girls, as if they really were just friendly little kids; apparently nobody had warned him.

It was time to be a good Samaritan. "Va via!" I shouted, as Alberto had advised us to do. "Va via!" I ran toward the thieves and their intended victim, flapping one arm while keeping the other firmly around the bag that held my camera and lire.

The girls scattered. The young man gaped at me as though wondering if I was quite sane. "They're thieves," I explained. "They were trying to get at your backpack." "You speak English?" he asked. I told him I was from New York; he turned out to be from Ohio. He was fairly sure the children hadn't gotten anything; he still seemed to doubt that they had been trying to steal from him. Anyway, his money was in a belt under his clothes. Right now, he had to catch up with some people traveling with him who were supposed to meet him a few blocks away. He hurried off while I hoped he wouldn't open his backpack later to find an unpleasant surprise.

Now here were four more kids with a newspaper bearing down on Betty, Bob, and me. They wouldn't hurt us, which definitely made them preferable to the typical New York City mugger or to those young Floridians who find amusement in shooting tourists, but they could still boost a few of our valuables before we knew what was happening.

Betty clutched her purse tightly while Bob hung on to his camera case. Suddenly I heard a bloodcurdling shriek.

One of the hopeful thieves had apparently stepped on a cat. They all hesitated, just long enough for Betty to scream. "Aaah! Get outa here!" she shouted, an exhortation that worked as well as "Va via!", since the children immediately scattered.

The aggrieved cat scurried off before we could find a way to demonstrate our gratitude. I didn't see any cats nearby, but others were roaming the tiers below us, stalking their invisible prey among the old stones.

I spotted some more Roman cats the next day, while walking along a narrow cobblestoned street to the Parthenon after paying a visit to the famed Trevi Fountain. I had dutifully tossed in a penny, mindful of the movie Three Coins in the Fountain and the legend that such a gesture would ensure one's return to the Eternal City.

A few tourists and I had retained Alberto for a tour of St. Peter's and the Vatican Museums, where we had spent most of the day. "You can buy a Papal blessing," he had told us, "right here, at St. Peter's. Have it made out to anyone you like, a real Papal blessing, signed by at least two Cardinals. Something nice for the family!" I was hard-pressed to think of anyone I knew who might welcome such a memento. "You can have one delivered to your hotel by this evening!" I was mighty tempted at that point to get one for myself; it wouldn't hurt to cover my bets spiritually, and the blessing might have added a nice touch to my office walls. But Alberto wasn't being too insistent, and I had the feeling his own religious feelings were mingled with some doubts. He had, after all, been upfront about mentioning the homosexuality of Michelangelo while leading us to the Sistine Chapel.

Rome is full of narrow streets, some so narrow that you can reach out your arms and touch the walls on either side. You quickly discover why Romans drive such small cars. The street leading to the Parthenon was both narrow and treacherous, with uneven cobblestones that could easily trip or twist the ankles of passers-by. I was creeping along this street when I came to a broad stone staircase between apartment buildings, and looked up to see an old woman carrying three large bowls.

Then I saw the cats. They streamed onto the steps and surrounded the woman before she had even set down the bowls. I later found out from Alberto that this particular old woman had been feeding stray cats for years, and that people in other parts of the city often set out food for the animals. There were a lot of stray cats in Rome. Presumably there were plenty of domestic cats, too, but I hadn't seen any of those yet. Given the habits of Rome's drivers, I guessed that anyone owning a cat would ensure a long life for his pet only by keeping the cat inside at all times.

The Parthenon, little more than a block away from this swarm of feline freeloaders, is notable for its dome, a marvel of ancient engineering; both the Duomo in Florence and St. Peter's Basilica were modeled on this structure. The trick was to construct the dome with the heaviest materials of granite and stone at the base, and the lightest ones, bricks made of volcanic ash, at the top. There is a hole in the dome's center to provide light; during bad weather, it also admits rain. And, as I discovered, birds can use the hole as an entrance. Inside, far above me, a pigeon was circling the interior of the dome, apparently unable--or unwilling--to fly back out again.

Another tourist, I thought, and began to circle the floor of the Parthenon below the bird. At least here, the pigeon was probably safe from cats.

Outside a wall that has surrounded Rome since the fifth century A.D., you can follow the Appian Way to the Catacombs of San Sebastiano. I was traveling this ancient, cobblestoned thoroughfare on a Roman bus with some tourists from Australia and New Zealand and a few from the States among the passengers. The Vatican controls the entrances to the Catacombs, which means you aren't allowed inside without one of the monks or priests on duty as a guide.

The Appian Way is narrow enough to be a one-way road, but isn't; occasionally a car coming from the other direction would rush past with only an inch or two to spare. Much of the road was lined with trees and overgrown gardens partly concealed by low stone walls.

"There's a lot of villas behind those walls," a woman from Virginia informed me. "Liz Taylor and Richard Burton lived near here when they were making Cleopatra. La dolce vita, that's what you've got here." She gestured at another wall. "Marcello Mastroianni has a place here, too." She craned her neck, as if expecting to see him put in an appearance. Along the way, we also passed a tiny stone structure that was barely bigger than a cottage; this turned out to be a small church known as Domine Quo Vadis, commemorating the spot where St. Peter, escaping from Rome, was convinced by a vision to return to the city.

The entrance to the Catacombs of San Sebastiano was just beyond a bare walled courtyard. We had beaten the crowds, getting there just after 2:30, when the monks had finished lunch and the Catacombs were again open, but a French-speaking group was ahead of us. We bought tickets and finally met our guide, a rather dazed-looking man by the name of Father James.

"Anybody here from the States?" he asked. "From New York?" I slowly raised my arm. "Whaddya know," Father James said. "I'm from Ossining myself. Have some friends there." It turned out he meant friends in a Maryknoll monastery, not in the prison once called Sing Sing.

He led us down a long flight of stone steps into what seemed the bowels of the earth, and at this point I started feeling a bit claustrophobic. I can't go through the Lincoln Tunnel without feeling panic rise within me, and was beginning to wonder if visiting the Catacombs had been a mistake. We followed Father James through a long, narrow, dimly-lit tunnel of pale rock until he halted near an arch.

"You'll see this symbol written on the walls here," the priest said as he held up a piece of wood on which black symbols had been painted. "Got this as a present from my friends in Ossining I mentioned before. See this pattern of letters? They're Greek--chi, rho, and eta, standing for the first three letters in the name of Christ." And that was as close as he came to making a completely coherent statement during our tour. By now, he was almost chanting as he pointed out other symbols on the walls and discussed the history of the Catacombs, and his pale blue eyes had taken on the fixed, obsessed stare of Anthony Perkins in the last scene in Psycho.

He led us through tunnels, many with ceilings so low that I had to keep my head down as we strode through them. Keeping up a good pace was a necessity, because Father James was a fast walker, and I did not, with my claustrophobia, want to risk getting left behind. Now I knew the real reason the Vatican barred visitors without guides from the Catacombs, and it wasn't just so the monasteries could take in some money. Somebody could easily get lost in here; I was already completely disoriented in this underground maze.

We passed large arched hollows in the walls and open stone caskets that were empty graves. Along the way, Father James paused once in a while to let stragglers catch up and to fill us in on more of the history of the Catacombs. The pagan Romans had been the first to bury their dead here, because bodies could not be buried inside the city walls. Later, the Christians had come here, to bury their dead and to meet in secret. Eventually, most of the graves, Christian and pagan, had been looted by barbarian invaders; that explained why so many graves were empty.

We were led to the tomb of St. Sebastian, the last Christian to suffer martyrdom before Christianity, under Constantine, became acceptable. Father James told us about St. Sebastian in his unnerving, singsong tone. The reason his grave was so small was that it had been customary back then to break the legs of dead adults before burying them. The imagery of this particular saint, with all those arrows jutting from his wounded body, had always disturbed me, and I was remembering that the Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima had once had himself photographed in the guise of St. Sebastian, arrows and all. The tale of St. Sebastian had surely provided fodder to thousands of sadomasochists over the years. Being at the side of his grave was beginning to give me the willies.

Father James led us through another narrow passageway, then halted. Constantine, he explained, shouldn't be called the first Christian emperor. Apparently there had been two earlier Christian rulers in Armenia and Georgia who he felt were more deserving of this distinction. Constantine had not even become a Christian until he was practically on his deathbed, according to Father James. It was his mother, St. Helen, who was truly devout, and our guide made it clear than Constantine would have done well to follow her example. This, he said, was why St. Helen, during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, was given pieces of the True Cross, an honor denied to her son.

Father James had other lore to impart as he led us past more open tombs and stopped near two large hollowed-out caves. One was a pagan grave, he pointed out, where the ashes of Romans and their slaves had been interred. Marble vases held the remains of the Roman masters, while those of their slaves were stored in vases of terra cotta. Pagans had practiced such evils as drawing class distinctions even in death, and Father James clearly disapproved of that. He seemed to think such class prejudice was rooted in paganism, a belief that would certainly come as a surprise to a lot of Christian members of snooty private clubs. Indeed, he sounded as though he was himself hiding out in the Catacombs from the Romans.

And that was when I realized that Father James was still, in some sense, living in that world of early Christians and miraculous events. The modern world for him was a veil hiding the truth, and the Romans were still pagans persecuting the devout. Father James probably felt, as Philip K. Dick apparently did for a while, that he was living in another time.

He told us, in his strange chanting voice, that anyone who said a prayer in the Catacombs and who asked for forgiveness would be granted God's grace. He claimed that St. Philip Neri, a physician by trade, had prayed in the Catacombs and been given a new heart by God, and I wondered if he was telling this tale in case someone in the group was considering bypass surgery. This miracle of cardiology was the only thing we ever learned from him about St. Philip Neri. By now, some of the younger people in our group were keeping to the rear.

I stuck close to Father James. I was going to be sure I wouldn't get lost. It wasn't until near the end of the tour, when we had climbed up the stairs leading to the church above the Catacombs, that Father James finally gave vent to his apocalyptic leanings.

The world was coming to an end. He made this assertion without a trace of doubt in his voice. We were entering a dangerous time, and Revelations had warned us to beware of the land to the north; it was clear he meant Russia. Whoa, I thought; this guy is mentally flapping out to sea.

"Wait a minute," one of the New Zealanders behind me said. "Russians aren't Commies any more."

"That doesn't matter," Father James replied. "They have a lot of weapons of mass destruction, and they're a very troubled land. All the signs are there. The time is coming when we'll all be judged."

Maybe being on duty at the Catacombs had driven him around the bend. Maybe he had grown to see these tunnels as some sort of bomb shelter. Father James was ready to become a martyr; perhaps he longed for his martyrdom. I shrank back against one stone wall. If I, an atheist, could get this nervous listening to this obsessed priest, I could only wonder how those with religious leanings might be reacting.

"Any questions?" Father James asked. "Easy questions--I'll answer easy questions." He laughed a little.

No one had any questions. He led us up the stairs into the bright spaces of San Sebastiano's church.

What a relief! Sunlight was shining through the stained- glass windows; gold glittered on the edges of arches. Coming out of the Catacombs into that church was a resurrection of sorts; deliverance was at hand. We were offered a chance to sit and collect our feelings.

While we settled down, Father James imparted some more wisdom. No doubt some of us had been told by various tour guides that no Christians had died in the Colosseum, but this was a lie. Thousands of Christians had met their end there, and in the Circus Maximus as well. So much for Alberto's courses in history, I thought. And, Father James went on, he knew a lot of us must have gone to the Trevi Fountain and tossed in a coin or two. I tried not to look too guilty. Tossing coins into that fountain, he intoned, was nothing better than a pagan superstition. Saying a prayer in the Catacombs would do us a lot more good, and give us grace for all time. After all, it had gotten St. Philip Neri a brand-new heart.

"Any questions?" Father James asked us again.

A young woman with a hesitant voice had a relatively innocuous statistical query; how many people had been buried in the Catacombs? Hundreds of thousands, apparently. Then where were all their bones? a young man asked. Surely some would be left. Father James repeated that the graves had been looted, the bones scattered.

I didn't ask any questions, being convinced they would be seen only as challenges, and it was probably futile to challenge this man. I had never been much of a fan of monotheism, feeling that pagan societies had shown more of what we would call religious tolerance. I could believe in the creative and artistic miracle of the Sistine Chapel more than in Saint Philip Neri's miraculous transplant. I had thrown a coin into the Trevi Fountain and was inclined to give Alberto more credence than Father James where the history of the Colosseum was concerned.

I suppose we could have stood up and left at any time, but there we sat, waiting like children for Father James to dismiss us. Maybe he was waiting for us to repent of our pagan and sinful ways. Perhaps he was simply hoping at least a few of us would cough up some contributions to the church.

And then our reprieve came. Another priest came down the aisle and said that Father James was wanted outside. All of us bolted.

I eventually wandered out to the courtyard. There, in a small enclosure near the wall, was something I hadn't noticed before--a cat, sunning itself outside a wooden structure that was obviously its home. Two dishes, one with water and another with what looked like pieces of fish, sat just inside the row of stones that marked the cat's territory. Someone was taking good care of this cat; it was purring, and had thick healthy-looking black fur.

"Cute, isn't he?" Father James said from behind me. I jumped, nearly dropping my purse. "We all look out for him," he added.

I told him I was glad to hear that, and admitted to a fondness for cats. He asked for news of home; I allowed as how I didn't think the Yankees would make it to the Series, and that the Mets were a disgrace to the game. Then he asked me, in a vaguely wistful voice, if I'd give his regards to a Sister Bernardine O'Connell back in New York. He mentioned her convent and where it was. I decided not to admit that convents weren't my usual stomping grounds.

"I'll say hello for you," I said.

He leaned over and petted the cat, then scratched him behind the ears. I said goodbye and walked toward the road, feeling a little more kindly toward Father James.