Mazatlán’s street cats: Highly evolved urban felines

Life on the streets of Mazatlán can be arduous and austere, especially if you have four legs, or more specifically if you were born with four legs. (I’ve seen street dogs with less than four legs.) Street animals are common throughout the city; unwanted dogs and cats eking out varying degrees of a minimal living. Yet as bad as things are for these creatures, some manage to pull through well enough to breed, creating the next generation of feral scavengers, a little more cunning and a bit more adapted to the urban environment than their predecessors.

Going back was not an option, especially with all those pissed-off spiders

My research assistant and I spent this past summer diligently seeking experiences outside the typical Mazatlán box. The following is a synopsis of a September field trip that left us sunburned and a little bloody, but still smiling.

Several months ago we came up with the brilliant idea of riding our bikes to the jungle and trying out the mountain bike course set up by local bike shop. Our first trip was in June and it was wonderful; nice trail, well-marked, well-maintained with pleasant gradients. In fact, this ride was such a blast, we came back for more. By the middle of August the trail was shaded by the rapidly growing jungle canopy. We enjoyed a verdant world of dappled sunlight and flitting butterflies while traversing a smooth, hard, single track. I commended my assistant on her keen research abilities, for this was truly a world-class experience. Now that we were familiar with the trail, we thought the ride could only get better.

What other choice do you really have, anyway?!

Is time a fixed element as perceived by the average person, or is it more malleable, as suggested by Einstein, something that ebbs and flows like the seductive currents of a cosmic river? Like it or not, time is one of the major intangible influences that govern our lives and lifestyles. Even though it’s allotted equally to all, some never have enough while others seem to squander it freely. I’ve observed people that live their lives without the self-imposed constraint of scheduling or planning, like time was a minor factor in their interface with the world. Needless to say, each culture deals with time in a way that best suits the overall character of the population.

* And didn't know to ask

Sex in Mazatlán can be a wonderful thing. Hell, sex anywhere can be a wonderful thing, and it doesn’t require expensive shoes or protective head gear. A statistician came up with the figure that every day, 200 million couples around the world have sex, which is a little over 2,000 couples at any given moment. At times during spring break in Mazatlán, we could own a measurable percentage of that stat.