Feral cats. My friend Suzanne Barber is a certified feral cat collector (or something more official sounding) and she would lose her mind in Casablanca. And not because of her choice of husband, or the fact that she shares one bathroom with 3 men. No. Its a city riddled with feral cats. The whole country seems to be. And you can see the fleas jumping off them like circus clowns.
On Friday afternoon after we found our new hotel, we wondered out to explore our new area of town. A little bit more “gritty” than the downtown area where the Movenpick was. We found a nice place for lunch which was really beautiful and I had my first tagine and my first mint tea. We ordered it “sans sucre” which I bet we will never accomplish. We will continue to order it that way but I think the sugar is actually fused onto the leaves as it grows (at least its impossible to separate the two here) so we will be cautious not to drink too much of it.

On the way there I had spotted what looked like a market. LIke St. Lawrence market but much, much grittier. As we walked back at around 4:30 we wondered in to see it and it was rewarding. The centre was a big fish market. I was treading very very carefully because I have been known to become horizontal on slippery floors and there would be no recovering any clothing that hit that swamp. We saw a beheaded sword fish- head on one side and a selection of steaks on the other side. There were a ton of healthy looking oysters and some giant crabs on display. Some other fish like creatures that I could not identify. There were flower stalls, general dry goods stalls and spice stalls and so much more. Neat place.

And there were cats. Where there’s fish there are cats. Cats with fleas. We grabbed a couple of photos of the cats. I’ll post them below. Cute little things from a distance. We saw two cats together and I thought immediately that they were having a little chit chat. Turned out the light coloured one was growling at the black one as if to say DUCK off stranger, this is my stall. Laura noted however that the black one, far from being a threat of any kind, was staring at the wall. Perhaps too much fish oil, perhaps just a bad cat from way back. Maybe a little slower than the others. Whatever the case I’m sure Suzanne would have taken him home and scrubbed him back into a respectable lifestyle.