Catcalls

It’s appropriate that a pet-shop should be a bird-shop – pajarería because the Spanish spent small fortunes on canaries or racing pigeons even when times were hard and non-flying domestic animals had to earn their food and houseroom. 

A good hunting (or poaching) dog was an even better investment than an operatic canary or jet-propelled pigeon but a cat was seldom anything other than a commonplace mouser. 

Velázquez put this in a nutshell over four centuries ago by devoting some of the right-hand corner of Las Meninas to a courtly, corpulent and long-suffering mastiff – mastín who patiently ignores the foot a child is planting on its back. 

Flora posing for Velázquez

Take a look at Las Hilanderas, however, and you’ll see a perfectly presentable tabby – gato atigrado with a nice white dicky - pechera relegated to the workroom floor.  In the spinners’ favour, though, is the way one woman looks as though she about to stroke the cat - or is she going to retrieve something from the floor? 

Un gato is a cat, una gata is a female cat, a tomcat is as un gato macho and a doctored, neutered male is un gato capado (or castrado if you like calling a spade a spade). 

People from Madrid are sometimes called gatos, a nickname allegedly earned in 1085 when Madrid was Magerit and under siege by the troops of Alfonso VI.  One soldier who was such a good climber that he earned himself the nickname of Gato scaled the fortress walls, then lowered ropes so his less catlike comrades could join him.  The fortress was taken, the Moorish flag removed and Magerit was on its way to becoming Madrid.

A non-animal, non-human gato is the jack used to prop up a car when changing a tyre and un gatillo is a trigger as well as the obvious kitten. 

Minino is the equivalent of puss and the traditional Micifuz corresponds to the equally traditional Tibby bestowed on my grandmother’s succession of cats.  Micifuz looks endearingly fuzzier and furrier although the Spanish pronunciation sounds rather like the spitting of an irate feline.

Gatear and andar a gatas (literally to walk like a cat) both mean to crawl or move on all fours and catlike is translated as felino, although a catty woman is described as maliciosa (unfair to cats) or, if she spices up the cattiness with gossip, chismosa. 

Some cat-connotations are lost in translation, so a catwalk is una pasarela or un andamio, depending on whether it is trodden by models or workmen and  a catcall is un abucheo.  To give a catcall requires the verb abuchear but a catnap dozes off into una cabezadita, literally a little nod, and catnip is nébeda or hierba gatera.  A cat burglar goes about his business as un balconero although a sneakthief is a rodent-like ratero. 

To let the cat out of the bag is delatar and to rain cats and dogs is llover a cántaros, literally jugsful.  Instead of smelling a rat, the Spanish say aquí hay gato encerrado – there’s a cat shut up here and dar gato por liebre – to give cat for hare is similar to selling, not buying, a pig in a poke.

Tiresome people who quibble or split hairs are said to look for three feet on the cat – buscar tres pies al gato.  You’d imagine any half-wit could easily find four but the erudite maintain that the pie in question is the metre in poetry and the saying refers to the futility of locating three syllables in a two-syllable word like gato.  And that’s a rather smart example of hair-splitting in itself.

Flora demonstrates how to catnap