I LOVE cats and the ones I saw roaming round a piazza just outside the place that would become Padria in The Choreography of Ghosts inspired a major character in the book.
Here's the scene in which Michael Morrison first encounters Roberto Rossi, who gradually emerges as a main player in the story:
“HEY, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” shouted Morrison.
Searching for the keys to his apartment, he had witnessed the outer door at the bottom of the stairs open and a small, spiky-faced, slender man, face ablaze with anger, hurl a cat into the alley with an accompanying volley of abuse.
“The cat is a bloody idiot. Sleeping, eating, drinking, pissing, shitting, messing the place up. He is a lazy good for nothing arsehole. A loser,” screamed the man, who was sloppily dressed in ill-fitting jeans, held up by braces, and an un-ironed t-shirt with a large hole in the shoulder.
“He’s a cat. What do you want him to do? You can’t treat him like that. I could report you to the police,” said Morrison, now as agitated as the owner of the unfortunate animal.
He loved cats and would often spend time with those around the quiet lanes just off San Marco, mostly ginger and cream, dozing away from the direct heat, and he wasn’t putting up with this type of behaviour.
“Do what you ****ing want. What’s it got to do with you, you English imbecile? What I do in my building is my business.”
The man accompanied his rant with an obscene salute known to Morrison as the bras d’honneur.
* From my forthcoming novel The Choreography of Ghosts