Nala watching the hot air balloons in Cappadocia.
“In Scotland, the land where I come from, we have an old saying: 'Whatever it has to be, it will be'. Some things in life are destined to happen. What must be, will be. It's destiny ’”. so it begins The world of Nala, a chronicle edited by La Esfera de los Libros which tells the story of friendship between Dean – a thirtysomething Scot who left everything to go around the world by bicycle – and Nala – a tiny kitten abandoned in the mountains between Montenegro and Bosnia.
And what if things happened... Specifically so many that Dean, with the help of Garry Jenkins, the writer who already collaborated with James Bowen on A Street Cat Named Bob, could articulate a story “Moving and totally charming”, as defined by The Guardian.
Nala on the walls of Budva, Montenegro, in December 2018.
THE ENCOUNTER
But let's go back to the beginning, to the exact moment in which this Scotsman – who had mounted a bicycle when he turned 30 to "go out and face our troubled world" – he heard the pitiful meows of a scruffy animal calling for help.
A meeting, recorded on video, which already has millions of views and which shows the moment Dean's heart beat his head by deciding to rescue that “scrawny little thing. With a long, slender body, large pointed ears, lanky legs, and a thick tail. His fur was fine, weather-beaten, and mottled, with patches of rusty red. But also he had the biggest and most piercing green eyes he had ever seen, that now they were looking at me as if they were trying to find out who I was.”
It was in December 2018 when Nala first appeared in Dean's life and on social media, who already accumulates almost a million followers on his Instagram account. A wall, that of @ 1bike1worlda, which, suddenly, began to be plagued with images of a cat that jumped from country to country in the handlebar toiletry bag and that became a virtual testimony of the unbreakable bond that was forged between a man and an animal, both equally curious, independent, resilient and adventurous. They experienced the kindness of strangers, visited refugee camps, rescued animals across Europe and Asia...**
THE STOWWAY
Dean Nicholson affirms that, after picking up the ‘Stowaway’, as the second chapter of El mundo de Nala is titled, he felt his journey take on a new direction, as did his view of his world, which he had ceased to see only through his eyes to see it through hers as well.
That is why we can feel, through the first pages of the book, the anguish that cross several borders with a restless cat hidden among her belongings: “It was one thing to leave a country and quite another to enter a new one. He knew that this time there would be more risk.”
Almost a score of countries traveled on two wheels the Scottish in an adventure that made him become a wiser and more mature person, as he has explained on more than one occasion, also partly due to Nala's company: “A people magnet (…) that he had the ability to put a smile on faces regardless of religion, age or culture.”
Are we there yet?” Nala asks as she sees the Azerbaijan border.
Thanks to the notoriety of the strange couple they formed –A big, bearded and tattooed guy pedaling with a kitten sitting on his shoulder – In addition to benefiting from the generosity of those in his path, Nicholson began raising money for local animal welfare charities. Nala had definitely changed his world, but also the world around him.