Expat author of ‘Life with Stanley’ writes about a cat — and a brain tumor

Jonathan Danby has quite a few more claims to fame that the average foreigner in Guadalajara.

First of all, he is a young man from South Africa — in  itself, a major distinction in a city that attracts few visitors from the southern hemisphere. 

Danby came here in 2008, bitten by the adventure bug, following an intrepid girlfriend, and trying to put an unfortunate encounter with a brain tumor firmly behind him.

But when the tumor proved more persistent than hoped, Danby stayed in Guadalajara, got medical treatment in the public and private systems, did better than doctors predicted, rescued a feisty kitten from Tonalá, named his tumor after it, and, most recently, wrote a book about it (the tumor) — “Life with Stanley.” The title seems to evoke John Steinbeck’s travel book “Travels with Charley” (a standard poodle), written when Steinbeck was in a delicate condition due to heart disease, and the movie “Harry and Tonto,” about the elderly Harry’s sojourn with his cat Tonto, as both face debilitation.

Danby has creative abilities and a facility with language, attested by his education in marketing, a prizewinning sound logo for which he received a trip to Germany (providing the backdrop for his first brush with the tumor) and the creative writing he has done in Mexico. 

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