Someone’s turned up the thermostat. As I write this, at 5pm, it’s 35 degrees Celsius outdoors (I just popped outside to check the thermometer, which is located permanently in the shade – and popped back in very quickly). It’s very quiet out there. In fact, it’s very quiet in rural Mallorca for most of August. During the day, it’s too hot to do much more than head for the beach or stay indoors with the cooling hum of the air conditioner. (We do a lot of the latter, particularly at weekends, when space on the sands is at a premium.)

Having a luxurious thick fur coat, our Birman cat Minstral seems to appreciate the air conditioning. I’m not sure he’d survive without it, unless he had a radical haircut. And I wouldn’t want to be the person to administer that! Our outdoor cats – the adoptees – stay close to the house, but hidden from the sun. If we have to go out in the car, we usually have to wait for one or two cats to drag themselves away from the shade underneath it. Beamer – probably the most intelligent member of our outdoor feline family – likes to curl up on the cool concrete floor in the dependencia, where our logs are stored for the winter. But they never venture far from the water sources we keep topped up, so they can drink when necessary.

We all become a bit livelier in the evenings, when it’s usually blissful to be outside, on one of the terraces. After dinner we often sit until bedtime, chatting, watching the cats, and marvelling at the geckoes on the wall. The latter look like dinosaurs in miniature and have stalking abilities that put our cat collection to shame. It’s fascinating to watch these lively lizards going into slo-mo as they approach an unsuspecting insect (dinner) that’s been attracted to the wall by the outside light.

And that’s what sometimes passes for entertainment on a hot August night in rural Mallorca!

Checking out the evening’s menu

Jan Edwards Copyright2014