The 9 Lives of Cat in Rabat: Life the 9th

As The Walrus once prophesied, the time has finally come to talk of many things - perhaps not about shoes and ships and sealing wax but of matters close to my heart.

Frankly, I haven't relished the thought of being the one to stick the needle into the Cat's paw and so, not surprisingly, I've let this go to the last possible moment. The truth is that I've grown attached to this humble space in the blogosphere; I've enjoyed contributing to it. Of course, some posts were better than others while many were pure crap. But I've made a few friends along the way - few of whom I managed to put a face to - and a motley crew of antagonists who kept me honest and pissed me off from time to time. Greedy attention-seeking whore than I am, I always looked forwards to reading the comments - supportive, informative, challenging, and sometimes downright shitty - left by my readers with a salubrious mixture of delight and dread. That anyone should spare a few moments from his or her day to stop and read my addled ramblings and leave behind their thoughts never failed to tickle me enormously.

Nonetheless, as Mr. CinR and I are leaving for Madrid in a few hours, today must mark the end to the misadventures of Cat in Rabat. And although I've been repeatedly asked whether I'll continue blogging from Spain, I quite sincerely cannot decide. Few people appreciate how much work is involved in maintaining a blog. Readers can be fickle and short of patience; if you don't post for a few days, they're irrevocably gone. It's the nature of the blogging beast but consequently, the pressure to churn out interesting and creative bits of prose - especially when nothing much is happening in your world - can be taxing. Fortunately, being snarky has never been a challenge.

Having said that, the Cat may come back but not the very next day ... and if I do, I'll post the link on this blog.

For the record, I'd just like to say that I don't hate Morocco. Unfortunately and perhaps understandably, many of my readers have walked away from this blog with that impression. The fault is, of course, mine because I made a deliberate decision way-back-when not to create yet another insipid travel blog that detailed how wonderfully exotic life is in Morocco. There are enough of those out there. I wanted to offer readers - most of whom I erroneously assumed would be members of my family - a more balanced view of life in a North African Muslim country. It isn't always pretty and anyone who says otherwise is either deluded, constrained by the shackles of political correctness, or insulated from the exigencies of living in Morocco by wealth.

There, I've gone off on a ramble again. Problem is that this putting down of a not-very alter alter ego is much harder than I thought it would be. But really, what I have to say is quite simple and is offered sincerely:

Goodbye and thank you. Repeat many many times.

p.s. Be kind to stray animals.