Story sent by Oscar Mármol - 20/8/2000

oscarmarmol@infovia.com.ar

Dear friends:

                        I want to engage myself to the homage you are paying to Catulo Castillo, that great poet of our Tango, by telling you a story that fully depicts him as a person who loved life and all God’s creation. I met Catulo around 1960, and it was totally by chance. I was visiting a friend of mine at his house in Ciudad Evita, and he told me his neighbour Cátulo was expecting him to talk about box. I have to mention that my friend was Ricardo González, or “Gonzalito”, best known by his admirers as “The monkey”, who was South American Featherweight champion. He invited me to go with him, and I accepted. Cátulo opened the doors of his house for us, and treated us very cordially. Then, I witnessed a long conversation about box, which was a sport that fascinated Catulo, since he had practised it when he was younger. Around that time, Ricardo González was a box teacher, and their dialogue was about the new generation of boxers. As they were talking, I could hear some dogs barking in the back of the house. Cátulo interrupted his conversation and asked me if I liked dogs. I said I did, so he wanted to know  if I had one. I answered that I didn’t have a dog, so he suggested he could give me one. I didn’t understand the situation, but he invited me and my friend to go to his backyard. There were six dogs there, each of them with its house and its rope. I asked Cátulo if he sell dogs. He looked at me in a paternal way and said: “No, I don’t. These are tramp dogs. I bring them in from the street, I feed them, I have them seen by a vet who gives them all the vaccines, and then I look for someone like you to be their new owners”. Obviously, I could not resist myself to the proposal of such a huge figure as he was. The result was that I showed up at home with a dog for my little son. I remember Cátulo told Ricardo and me that he was planning on buying an old big house to use it as a home for abandoned animals. Some time later, MAPA was born. In this organization, young vets took care animals who had no owners and looked new homes for them, after having fed them and cured them. The great artist had fulfilled his dream, and many people who were in the television, radio or journalism world, helped him to do it. This is my homage to a great artist, who gave us so many beautiful tango lyrics.