This is the third and final post in my series about the street cats we met while on holiday in Benidorm, and I saved the best for last !
We spent quite a bit of time while we were there walking along the sea front, mainly because our apartments were towards one end of the Levante beach, and all the shops and restaurants were at the other end.
As we were walking back to our apartment one afternoon, I happened to glance left, over a low wall and into a rough gravel car park. There, chilling in mottled shade behind some plants was a very handsome black cat.
The shade actually gave him a good amount of camouflage, and we almost didn't notice him.
He was very relaxed there, enjoying the sun and far enough away from the wall that no-one would disturb him.
But he looked over at us, blinked a few times (a cat sign of friendship, for anyone reading this who isn't a cat person), had a little stretch and came over to us.
We were amazed ! Most of the other street cats we'd seen had been incredibly wary of human contact and tended to stay at arm's length, but this chap came over to say hello with the kind of strut that made it clear he had decided he owned that piece of the seafront.
He was surprisingly vocal, and let us give him a good stroke, which is why we stopped taking photos at that point.
Since we give cats names just so we know who we're talking about, we decided that we'd call him Benny. After all, we were in Benidorm and he obviously ruled the town !
The next day, Benny was on the other side of the car park, where some kind person had set up a box for him to shelter in.
As soon as we stopped and said hello to him, he got up out of his box and came over at a leisurely pace (just to prove he was still in charge).
Climbing up on the wall, he let us stroke him for ages, even lying down and rolling over onto his side. This time my wife was able to take a couple of photos, although it was hard because he spent most of the time moving around to get the best strokes !
Although it's not in the photos, Benny is definitely on the rota for the licensed cat feeders; he had a dish of cat biscuits and a bowl of clean water next to his box.
The clipped ear tells us that Benny is a street cat who has been caught by the trap-neuter-release program, not someone's pet who is just pretending to be a street cat to get attention !
Benny is one of the most affectionate cats we've met. I really hope he'll be there when we go back in the autumn.
We discussed adopting him; there are huge hurdles in doing that (which we'd happily deal with), but the biggest issue is that he's clearly comfortable where he is, I suspect he is known and loved by quite a few people locally. It might be wrong to take him out of his home environment, and I'm not sure he'd enjoy the colder and wetter English weather !