You’ve probably seen her on the beach in San Juan del Sur, walking four dogs (one with the gait of a three-legged dog) and transporting on her hand a white parrot.
She always has a smile and a wave when I greet her as I pass, typically going in the opposite direction. Well, as much of a wave as she can give with four leashes in one hand and a parrot in the other. It’s usually her parrot hand that waves, and for a split second I think the parrot, with its flutter of feathers as her hand briefly lifts and falls, will take off and fly away. But it doesn’t and they continue on their walk.
Cathye Aley is the quintessential lover of animals. And an iconic figure along the bay of San Juan del Sur. She’s lived here for seventeen years and been rescuing animals for the last fifteen.
Today’s count of animals with whom she shares her house and large, shady yard, consists of seven dogs, four parrots, 27 adult cats and seven kittens (of which four will be available for adoption to a loving home soon).
All of her animals are rescues, and all of the adults are spayed and neutered.
But these aren’t the only beneficiaries of her deep love. She feeds her neighbor’s cats. She takes food to a dog across town, across the street from where she used to live; a dog so skinny that when I pass him I expect to find him dead.
She talks to other neighbors, encouraging them to keep their caged birds in the shade and with water and food. She scolds another neighbor for keeping a squirrel in the house with a rope around its neck. She shakes her head and the pain wells up from her heart and out her mouth, “How can people treat animals like this?”
People abandon their kittens with their eyes still shut. She hears them crying and takes them in and feeds them with eyedrops, day and night, day and night, only to watch them die. And then she does it all over again. Her heart the size of the world.
