Canela
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Español
February 16, 2025
by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher
I was dog sitting in colonia Allende. Veronica has been away for months. Yasna, Vero's lifetime friend and current housemate, had a healing gig in Puerto Vallarta. Canela, the dog, and I had a lovely three weeks together.
Except that, right away I missed my sun-filled apartment and my view. Then, I forgot to bring my spirulina, a superfood I take daily to improve my endurance. I would tell patients, "You can work the horse really hard, but you had better give it some special oats at the end of the day."
"Endurance" is the right word. High season (there actually is one this year) adding to my already brutal work schedule, halfway through my visit with Canela, my throat got sore, and I got a very slight cough. With copious quantities of fresh-squeezed orange juice those quickly went away, only to be replaced by a head cold. There was no sneezing to speak of, but there was lots of nasal mucus.
I should have driven home and gotten the remedies and supplements I needed to get through it. I am a doctor after all. But I can be stubborn. Down here they don't say, "The shoemaker's children go barefoot." They say, "In the blacksmith's house the knives are wooden."
Then, this was the first cold I've had in 40 years that lasted more than four days. The worst of it was my lack of energy: physical and mental, and stamina or no, the show had to go on. I took numerous naps.
Yasna returned and I came back home last Saturday, schlepping my bicycle, and bags and boxes of clothes and food, including what I had bought that morning at the organic market.
Fellini
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Even by my lax standards, my apartment was a mess. I had left the (screenless) floor to ceiling living room window open so that Fellini, my cat, could come and go and, of course, dust and various small bits of things had blown in. The cleaning lady was scheduled to come Tuesday, but even I had to clean up a bit.
I swept the floor and put the kitchen into hygienic order. Then, I got carried away, unpacking bags and boxes that strictly speaking, didn't need to be unpacked, and dusting and washing things that could have waited to be dusted or washed.
I say "carried away" because, late that night I regretted those two hours spent housekeeping, when I was up an extra two hours past midnight, publishing my Sunday magazine and newsletter. How was I supposed to get over my cold?
Fellini was happy to see me. But, after his being fed by my downstairs neighbor during my absence, it took a bit for him to understand that, once again, his half can of tuna was only going to be on the sunset menu.
Life may importune outside, but at home I expect, more or less, to be left alone, not harassed by a cat every time I enter the kitchen. If someone would give me tuna just for meowing, I'd meow, too.
Then, I noticed that in my absence, despite my precautions, the cat had been kneading the top of the back of the leather sofa that came with the apartment, leaving tiny claw holes in the leather.
I have in the past, when catching him in that act, very actively dissuaded him from doing this. I screech like a cat, bat him around a bit with a broom while he hides under the bed, and even wet him with a half-liter of water.
Cleaning day
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The cleaning lady did come on Tuesday. When she does, to help the cleaning process, we put a number of things, including plants, my mini-trampoline and several pairs of shoes and sandals outside on the landing of the inside stairway.
The last straw was when Fellini started chewing on one of those displaced plants. He knows better. He just wasn't taking me seriously. I went into Big Cat mode, letting him know who was boss: if you are going to destroy the house, then you can't be inside, let alone sit in my lap.
The thing was, the next day, when I went to look for my favorite pair of shoes, I couldn't find them. After looking everywhere, my suspicion centered on the young woman from the family across the street, who had used the almost-always-unoccupied apartment above me, while my now missing shoes were on the stairs. (Her mother, who gets the upstairs apartment in order when the owner is about to arrive, has the keys.)
The sofa back, now better protected
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I went out... in sandals, and searched again when I came back. It's a small place. Then I went over and spoke with her mother.
I was far from confrontational. I didn't want to make any enemies over an old pair of shoes. I suggested that maybe her daughter (who wasn't home at the time) thought I was throwing the shoes out. The mother said that they would come over when her daughter got home. They did.
The daughter denied taking them. I believed her, protesting myself that the thought made no sense, that the shoes had no value. At one point the mother looked past me as if she wanted to come in and look for the shoes herself.
When they left, I went back to publishing. The week's events all posted, I got up and looked for the shoes one more time.
There, on top of the white plastic bags on the floor of my bedroom closet, was another bag, large and white, the kind in which come the large loaves of sourdough from Buonforno. There, peeking out from a tear in the paper, was a tiny patch of brown.
I had transported those shoes to and from Veronica's house in that bag to keep them from contacting other clothes, and tossed them, bag and all, into the closet when I had unpacked Saturday, when I ought to have been publishing.
White on white; unless we force them to, the eye and brain just glance about, not paying close attention to anything.
If it wasn't already past 11pm I would have written my falsely suspected neighbors. (I have the mother's WhatsApp.) As it was, I did the first thing the next morning:
