Welcome to Moggienegro

A little mouse told me, well, Rommy our Croatian tour guide, but welcome to Moggienegro anyway.

Rommy was probably stretching it to say the Montenegrins were the first to use cats to fight the Black Death.

But they have certainly made cats their USP.

And you can’t move in Kotor for cats around your feet.

Which is all fine by us.

We have come to Kotor in Montenegro from our loveholidays billet in Dubrovnik, Croatia, for the day (€97 for two/GetYourGuide).

Montenegro’s mini-Dubrovnik

Unbeknownst to us Kotor is a smaller, less busy, cheaper, and equally beguiling walled city to Dubrovnik.

It too has churches, Serbian Orthodox, and reliquaries, and a devotion to the Evangelists.

With its cathedral proudly displaying monster-sized framed pictures of the bibliographers.

But while the Montenegrins are clearly a pious people.

As evidenced by the church island made by fishermen and dedicated to Our Lady at our first stop in Perast.

Their real devotion is to their cats which have the run of their Medieval jewel Kotor.

Kotor’s cat culture

Kotor, in the apron of the black mounts, or Monte Negro, which give this petite country its name, has much to recommend it.

A palm tree-lined promenade, by the lake shore from which our boat comes ashore, leads to a grand arch.

It proudly proclaims its Italian links, Partisans’ victory over the Nazis and Yugoslavian champion Marshall Tito.

All of which you can delve further into at the Maritime Museum which chronicles the two world wars and Balkans conflicts (€6pp).

The Miaowritime Museum

But our ears’ pricked up at the prospect of visiting the Miaowritime Museum, or Cats Museum (€1pp).

Where Lola is there to greet us, splayed over the counter, and generous with her cuddles and purrs.

Laminated sheets give visitors a guide in your own language to the exhibits.

All of which give a fun, feline, look into the world of cats.

How battalions adopted them as mascots, Hollywood stars petted them, children included them in their games and animators infantilised them.

Every shop sells cat-themed merch, from clothes, through tote bags, jewellery and porcelain and more besides.

While the pussies luxuriate on a church door step in the mid-20s mid-afternoon sun.

Lazing on a tabby afternoon

You would be forgiven for thinking they might be sleeping off the titbits from tables of the speciality oysters and muscle local fare.

We are though discouraged from feeding them our dishes.

With the Cats Museum advising that we should donate cat food at any one of a number of stop-offs around town.

The Kotor cats, again if Rommy is to believed and she is mischievous with us, are symptomatic of the Montenegrins.

The laziest of the six countries that made up the old Yugoslavia.

And that’s a bad thing?

Farewell feline friends

I take my cue from my feline friends and have a doze on the coach back to Croatia.

Not even the sight of the cats coming and going freely over the border while we are stuck for an hour at customs can make us take against them.

We eventually get through and as I look back over my shoulder I swear the sign says…

Welcome to Moggienegro.