Salon.com > Jose R. Alonso http://www.salon.com Fri, 24 May 2013 21:13:11 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 The toy cat that escaped Cuba http://www.salon.com/2011/03/30/rubber_cat_fleeing_cuba_open2011/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/30/rubber_cat_fleeing_cuba_open2011/#comments Wed, 30 Mar 2011 22:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/2011/03/30/rubber_cat_fleeing_cuba_open2011 I was born in Cuba in the midst of the fall of one dictator, Fulgencio Batista, and the rise of another, Fidel Castro. My father was a sergeant in the army of the former and an enemy of the state of the latter. Through a shuffling of paperwork that was uncommonly fast for a pre-digital age military bureaucracy, my father's army discharge was expedited and he retired to take over the family business. His retirement was without benefits since regimes that overthrow other regimes have a problem honoring their enemies' pension plans. But at least my father was able to leave alive, intact and without having to spend time in one of Castro's prisons.

For some time things were OK. My father took over his father's butcher shop, and my mother took care of me and my older sister. I took to what babies did best: eat, sleep and soil my diapers. Accompanying me in my crib, I had many stuffed animals, but I took a fancy to a small rubber toy cat. When I could talk, I named him Hebertico. No one is sure why I came up with that name but it stuck.

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