June 26, 2013
Grishka Goes AWOL 
and Other Cat Tales;
Marseillan

          Grishka, Francine's cat, is a smoky grey with golden eyes.  Four years old, his name is the Russian for Gregory and means "watchful", or "vigilant".   He is the lord of the manor here; however, his demesne does not go unchallenged.  Two nights ago, a black cat walked along the top of garden wall, and yesterday morning, a fluffy cat the color of an unpeeled almond had a stare-down with Grishka on the patio.

           Cats roam freely through Mèze, and in all the towns I have been in.  Whether they are strays or simply exercising a streak of independence is hard to say, although their sang froid walking down a main street gives new meaning to the old saw about a cat having nine lives.

            Grishka is a cat with a sculptural look.  Whatever pose he is in, he looks self-possessed.  If he stands on the first step of the staircase leading to the second floor of the house, he almost looks like a door ornament in the shape of a cat: still, gathered in himself, present in the moment, inscrutable.

            He has not been difficult to care for.  I lay out his food three times a day, along with water; let him outside and into the garden when I am there; bring him in when I am going out.  Last night, however, he gave me quite a turn.

            I had had dinner on the patio and was done with the washing up, preparing to close the patio for the night, when I noticed Grishka was gone.  I looked everywhere in the house, as well as in the garden, but he had disappeared.  All I could think of was, "If he is not back by tomorrow, do I call Francine, or do I wait?"  Would it be worse to interrupt her holiday to tell her her beloved Grishka was gone, or should I wait until her return?  Would Francine ever forgive me for chasing Grishka away?

           I spent a sleepless night, my mind turning over the possibilities.  I awoke groggy, but went right to the patio: no Grishka.

           Walking upstairs, I saw him on the upstairs terrace, curled up in a potted palm.  Finding a bed for the night under the potted palm was easy, but how Grishka got there remains a mystery: to reach the second-floor terrace, he would have had to vault the garden wall, mount the jasmine-covered roof and drop onto the tiles.

                                                                           ***

             Marseillan, where the Canal du Midi empties into the Bassin de Thau, is a dowager of a town.  While Marseille is the oldest city in France, founded about 600 BC, and Agde on the Bassin de Thau is second-oldest, nearby Marseillan is one of the oldest villages in France, having been settled by the Greeks and the Phoenecians as well.  Its buildings are gracious and it boasts a Theatre Municipale that belies Marseillan's smallness: for the last 200 years a mere 3,000 people called Marseillan home.  Drawn by the area's natural beauty and the beaches on both the Bassin de Thau and the Mediterranean, the 2010 census counted 10,000 inhabitants, expected to rise to 14,000 by 2015.

             Marseillan Plage is the resort area built on the Mediterranean side of Marseillan.  There is a camping ground, Les Mediterranées, near a strip of small-scale beach bars and restaurants catering to modest income holidayers..  Say what you will about this incursion into the natural beauty of the ocean, it is a model of cleanliness.  Plage Robinson (named after Robinson Crusoe, I am told), is a wide-open beach whose fine sand and shallow waters are neither a swimmer or a surfer's paradise, but a fine place to take a sea bath, or baignade, as it is called here.

            The sun has been very hot all day, so I don't get to the beach until 4:30 p.m.  There is a young life guard, a welter-weight boxer from the look of him, patrolling the area.  As he watches the shoreline from his fiefdom, the blockhouse known as a Pointe de Secour,  he practices his boxing moves: dancing, throwing gloved punches, then pointed kicks.   The life-guard is practicing Savate, or la boxe française.  This is a traditional French martial art which uses the hands and feet as weapons.  In Savate the fighters wear shoes, unlike Asian kick boxers.  The technique used in deploying the feet must be graceful: he is.

             The life-guard is stripped to the waist, wearing a black satin and gold-trimmed pair of boxing shorts.  He moves like a dervish as he goes through his routine.  With Plage Robinson posing little or no risk of misadventure to bathers, he will stay in fighting trim though the summer, going through his moves under the shade of the whitewashed blockhouse, delighting one and all.  Friday the school holidays begin: he will be ready for them.  Robinson Crusoe never had it so good.