Casablanca Cat

At the end of April Catriona and I spent two full days in Casablanca staying at the Caliph's house, the home of Tahir and Rachana Shah and their two young children. On the recommendation of our hosts we had lunch the first day in a restaurant where the food was said to be as good as that cooked in Moroccan homes.

We sipped delicious freshly squeezed orange juice and nibbled olives while we waited for the first course to appear. This was a tray of dips and salads which we ate with bread. When we had finished the waiter brought our chicken tagines, a half chicken jointed, tender, succulent and subtly spiced.

Hardly had I lifted the conical earthenware lid, when I saw at my feet, sitting in the narrow border of dark earth that separated the tiled floor from the wall, a cat. He (you could tell it was a he from his stance) sat in dignified silence, a haughty beggar. He was a tabby in the sense that his short hair was brindled black on light grey. When I looked up the word 'tabby' in a dictionary I discovered it can also mean a fabric like silk or taffeta with a watered pattern and the word came originally from Arabic. Al-'attabiya was the quarter of (Prince) 'Attab, the part of Baghdad where the fabric was originally made.

He watched me eating my tagine until I could bear it no longer and, surreptitiously tearing off a piece of chicken, and another and another, placed them on the pink tile beside him. When I had finished he moved closer to Catriona.

At dinner that evening we mentioned the restaurant cat to our hosts. Cats, they told us, are found in many public places in Morooco. People respect cats and are considerate towards them because they believe jinns can take the form of a cat.

When we were in Casablanca airport having our passports carefully examined by taciturn immigration officials, Catriona drew my attention to a (you've guessed it) walking silently behind us.