Returning to Uruguay

During our time away, we had rented out our properties. As of last year, we had discovered that while the flat was fine, the house had been turned into a cannabis farm. Of course, this had caused quite a lot of damage. Lee’s sister had moved in about six months earlier to a house that was not in the best of states. We had promised that on our return we’d fix some key things. There was some bad water damage and the fence had fallen down. While we had both had a good go at some of this while we were together, there hadn’t been enough time to do it all.

Therefore, we decided that Lee would stay an additional two weeks to really get on top of things while I returned to Uruguay. We didn’t want to leave the cats for more than a month and it felt a little unfair to ask Jessica to look after them for any longer. My return flight landed on the 7th of September. After a 25-hour journey on top of a 17-hour flight, I suppose I should have gone straight to bed. Instead, wired on sleep deprivation and motivated by the very smelly house, I set about cleaning.

In the week while I waited for Lee, I had planned to spend some time fitting all the new parts I’d brought back for Ruby. However, it was not so straightforward to go and get her. Jessica was now using her repaired car, but didn’t want to leave it on the street. As she had no dropped kerb fitted to her new drive yet, the car could only be kept next door. Ruby would have gone up the kerb, but she didn’t fit under the electric fence wires that ran across the top of the gate. So, for the meantime, she remained parked at Jessica’s friends’ house.

Jessica was also somewhat preoccupied with family matters. Her father was very ill and she wanted to go and visit her daughter in Spain. As I was now back, she decided she had the perfect opportunity for a free house sitter and went to do just that. I was left in control of the house and animals. There weren’t too many when I returned. Julian, the little black kitten we had rescued, had gone. So too had another long-term resident. The puppies had all been rehomed. On the day Jessica left for the airport, Patsy also found a new home. This would have left me with a relatively small collection of animals, had Jessica and I not gone cat stealing a few days earlier.

Just a few blocks from the house, she had been told about a hoarder. Apparently someone with around twenty cats in their house that were not living in good conditions and were also not sterilised. We sat outside the house watching. We saw a few within just a few minutes. A fluffy white one and a fluffy grey one too. Both looked pregnant. Jessica decided we would come back with traps and try to take them. I was a little unclear where I stood morally here. Perhaps we were stealing someone’s beloved pets. Could we really just be grabbing cats willy-nilly off the street? But I decided it wasn’t my place to question it. She had been reported by several people who suspected animal abuse. Jessica set the traps outside the front gate and baited them. It didn’t take long to catch the two cats. I ran over, grabbed the traps and legged it around the corner to where she was waiting with the boot open. We stuffed them inside and headed back.

If I had been a little unsure about what I thought of this, I certainly felt better once we heard back from the vet. Both cats were pregnant and, despite the fact that it was of course a little sad, they aborted and sterilised both of them. It also turned out the grey cat had some strange cyst and the white cat had cancer on its ears. These animals were clearly not loved or looked after and, had they had babies, they would likely have suffered the same fate. At least now they had received some medical care as well as decent food. Both were quite feral, hiding in the sofa in the cat room and refusing to come out.

I was now left alone with these two new cats as well as the usual lot. Jessica had been in Spain less than 24 hours and I already had two more pregnant feral cats added to the collection. The cat room was now quite full of fur, rage and hormones. While they may not have been pleased to see me, our girls certainly were. Shinky, Jessica’s 18-year-old cat, also took to sleeping on the bed at night. Manuela would be found under the covers next to me, while Quasi claimed the foot of the bed. Despite it being a double, competition for space was fierce.

I thought I might enjoy life by myself. For the first time in my adult life, I was living alone. I had visions of reading books by the fire and going jogging around the park. The reality was somewhat different. In the end, I basically stopped eating properly as it turned out I was infinitely too lazy to cook for just one person. Instead of relaxing afternoons by the fire, I had finally recovered Ruby. The day Jessica left and took the car with her, I jumped in an Uber and went to collect her. Ruby juddered her way back across the city. The suspension squeaked, the engine stuttered and the speedo cable failed. Clearly, I had things to be getting on with.

The weather in the city had just started turning. That spring feeling crept into the air. I stopped wearing both jackets indoors. The washing on the line finally dried. Slowly but surely, I worked my way through fitting the parts I had brought back and carrying out some maintenance. I still needed Lee to bring a few more bits and I had also decided to wait until Argentina to do an oil change. The week to myself was over before I knew it and I was almost happy to get out of bed at 5am to collect Lee from the airport. His flight had not been subjected to the delays that mine had and so arrived on time at 6am.

We had a few days to ourselves in the house before Jessica returned. We did the last few jobs on Ruby and began to re-pack and reorganise everything, all under the watchful eye and constant supervision of Skipper. She had been untouchable when we left, but now she followed us around howling for attention. She was a proper little sweetie and it’s a good thing she already had a safe home here or I would have struggled to leave her behind.

In the end, we didn’t leave for another week. It took a while to get everything sorted. We handed over the $600 we had raised to help support Jessica’s work and were thrilled to hear that it had paid off the outstanding vet bill. With our good deed done, it was finally time to say goodbye. We were ready to get back into van life again.

Our first stop would be retracing our steps to the small town of Colonia del Sacramento, heading west along the coast. While I debated the cost of going, as the tolls and fuel here were not cheap, it was supposed to be one of the highlights of Uruguay. Not only that, but we were excited to return to the spot we had camped in previously: a beautiful quiet lake just on the outskirts of town. It seemed the perfect way to get back into the swing of things and remember how to live in a tiny space again after spending more than two months in actual houses.