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.

Three years ago I rescued two coal-black kittens at the Stone Island embarcadero, so small they needed to be hand-fed. They scarcely survived the first week. As they gained strength and health, it became apparent they were many generations away from their presumably domestic ancestors. These cats are wary, quite intelligent and will kill anything they can get their paws on, providing, of course, it’s no bigger than twice their size.

This got me to thinking about the evolutionary path of street animals. The process of natural selection seems accelerated by the hard and fast life on the streets. Weak, dim-witted and lazy animals don’t last long in this highly competitive urban environment. The obvious key to survival is finding a reliable food source. This can be accomplished in several ways: scavenging garbage, stealing or sucking up to humans. Since trash is left in bags on the street three times a week, there are easy pickings for both dogs and cats. However, since the locals rarely dispose of anything with nutritive value, this produces some very skinny scavengers.

Many of the street cats here are part Siamese, with long tails, big ears and even some with blue eyes. Since this breed is known for its high degree of intelligence, the Siamese bloodline has rapidly climbed the local evolutionary ladder. I’ve heard that many years ago, Mazatlán had a burgeoning rodent population that was getting out of hand. To remedy this, cats were brought in. I believe this to be the probable origin of the Siamese blood line. Even though there are still rodents, the cats have made a significant impact on them. The long-term result was the creation of a highly evolved urban feline.

Where I live in Old Town, I have the dubious opportunity to interact with lots of feral cats, or should I say they have the opportunity to interact with me. When I first moved in, I was ill-prepared to deal with the invasive nature of the clever street cat. I like to keep doors and windows open to cool my seedy living space, but quickly discovered this practice of airing-out was an open invitation to every cat in the barrio. I never knew cats could climb a brick wall, open a screen door or remove a window screen. I responded to this invasion with the best weapon I had: Snickers the Wonder Dog.

Snickers soon learned it was open season on any strange cat in the house and the game was on. She pays no attention to strange cats outside, which is commendable. Otherwise, I’d have a hard time walking her anywhere in Mazatlán. Snickers solved most of my problems when I was home, but it was still necessary to close up the house and plug all the holes when I was away.

After a year of being on the defensive, I changed tactics. I started feeding the neighborhood cat pack and taming the many kittens. When I became their benefactor instead of the-ogre-with-the-dog, a tentative truce was established.

It wasn’t long before I had a fat and sassy group of furbearing freeloaders camped close by. I’ve been able to take many of them to the vet for basic care and spaying/neutering, and now have a stable and healthy cadre of cats too fat and lazy to bother climbing a brick wall or ripping the screen from a window. There are moments when I think I won, and moments when I’m certain the cats won, but the only thing that truly matters is that we now co-exist in peace.

The unique individual known as Bodie Kellogg has a special place in his heart for those who need four steps to move forward. Reach him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .