Februar, marec 2013 - Adria Airways

UMETNOST IN KULTURA / ART & CULTURE
Ljubljana, December and January
INSPIRED IN ISTRIA The Wild Cats of Piran – The Back Story
It was a few years ago now while on holiday in ISTRIA, ON THE
BORDER OF ITALY AND SLOVENIA, that the idea came to author
Scott Alexander Young for a series of children’s books called
The Wild Cats of Piran. It was on the second day eating lunch
at one of Piran’s oceanfront cafes that inspiration struck. Or
perhaps it’s truer to say he simply noticed what was going on
all around him.
Anyway, Piran: Think small but perfectly formed renaissance era Venetian town
with terracotta roofs and whitewashed stone walls, surrounded by cypress tree
covered hills, a place of picturesque antiquity facing onto a cobalt blue sea.
As Scott was sitting down to the midday meal with an agreeable companion,
and a seafood platter, he noticed not one, not two, but rather three cats
"working the tables" beneath; fetching scraps of food as they fell from above.
The feral cats moved swiftly underfoot from table to table, catching scraps
of food in their paws . There are many more such morsels than you might
think; flying from forks, falling from plates and utensils in the mess made by
humanity at table.
He saw it all happening in slow motion for a long still moment and then the
idea took hold. These cats could be part of a gang (or colony as a group of
feral cats are called) and they would have all kinds of adventures in the town,
not least with the ghost of Giuseppe Tartini, the diabolical violinist whose
statue graces the main market square. Scott was off on a roll!
The first cat – who Scott was already calling Felicia – was a sleek black cat that
just had to have come from Italy. The other, who was wild and warrior-like and
earthy, must ergo have been a Slovenian cat named Dragan. The third cat, an
orange tabby cat with an M pattern on his forehead, was Magyar the Magyar
(Hungarian). It was all so obvious. Regal Felicia must have been the Piranese
wild cats’ Queen, so Dragan must have been her loyal, battle hardened General.
Magyar meanwhile was self-appointed class clown. Felicia, Dragan, Magyar:
Together, with others just as colourful, they would make up a gang, or strictly
speaking ‘colony’ of feral cats called The Wild Cats of Piran.
Thus a series of children's books was born. The author set himself the task of
writing something as wise and whimsical as The Wind in the Willows, or Oscar
Wilde's stories for children, where the telling of the story is as important as the
tale itself. In December, The Wild Cats of Piran, the first in a series of nine chronicles
was published. The Wild Cat Chronicles are concerned with a colony of
courageous if also rather lazy feral cats that live in a small seaside town on the
Adriatic. Every day, the wild cats work the tables of the restaurants along the seafront
promenade, hunting for scraps; and the pickings are rich. Life is good in Piran.
In the animal realm, and in the sphere of the supernatural, things are rather
different. No one knows that better than Felicia, Queen of the wild cat colony.
In the summer which our story begins she is presented with a perfect storm of
troubles, for there are strange forces at work in this genteel town. For one thing,
Piran’s rats have become mysteriously evolved lately, and are mobilizing under
their leader, the sinister ‘General Rat’. As well as the newly formed rat army, there
are the town’s Ghosts and worse, meddling and incompetent humans to deal
with. Can Felicia hold her clan together, against all odds, or is their idyllic way
of life doomed to extinction The answers, some of them anyway, are in the first
set of nine tales bound to please literary cat lovers of all ages. Filled with vibrant
full colour illustrations, the chronicles are best enjoyed over a long afternoon or
evening in a snug armchair.
Our man at the drawing board is Moreno Chistè, the Swiss/Italian artist.
Moreno has captured the detail of Piran to the life with his really rather brilliant
depictions of the wild cats, and the charming old town of Piran. As for the
author, Scott Alexander Young is a television scriptwriter, travel writer and actor
from New Zealand living in Budapest, Hungary.
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