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Istanbul cats
Wed, 03 Jan 2007 23:50:25 +0000 rec.pets.cats.anecdotes
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Jack Campin - bogus address...
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Just back from ten days in Istanbul, which is near to being the cat
capital of the planet. I've been visiting Turkey for 25 years. When jXwXeXrXmXoXnXt...
I first went, there were many cats in very poor condition: matted fur, obvious flea infestation, sometimes malnourished. Over the last few years they've improved enormously. Some random portraits: - there is a small yard near the top of the Tunel (the nineteenth century cable-hauled underground railway) which was full of cats when I first visited, Back then, there was a scruffy second-hand foreign-language bookshop at the back of the yard, and a population of about 20 resident cats (and vast numbers of kittens). Now, the bookshop's gone and there are far less cats. When I first took Marion there in 1991, we found a small white kitten who loved being picked up and cuddled. So we looked for her when we were there next, three years later. She'd turned into a big fat cat who wanted nothing at all to do with us. Oh well. This time the place was barricaded off for building work and a big fluffy black one mooched in and out of the barred gate. - the fishmarket at the north end of the Galata Bridge is cat heaven. They have to share the spoils with seagulls but there are always dozens of cats here. Mostly quite young, there are busy roads all round and most of them must get run over. A short life but a happy one. - just south of the top of the Tunel is the Galata Sufi centre. This has an extended family of cats guarding the saints' tombs, the jXwXeXrXmXoXnXt...
current matriarch being a dark tabby with a big fluffy tail who wanders between the Sufi centre and the surrounding music shops and restaurants. She's very friendly, her descendants not as much. In time they should learn that musicians are just as soft a touch as Sufis. - at Anadolu Kavagi, the castle on the Asian side overlooking the Black Sea, there are a fair number of cats and dogs hanging about, but the undisputed King of the Castle is a magnificent dark ginger fluffy tomcat who lords it over his mediaeval ruins. The fluff is not for decoration, it was near freezing and blowing a stiff wind when we were there. Down at the quayside, the fish restaurants are an easy touch for a population of ginger and tabby cats who seem to spend all day in territorial disputes with the dogs. - a street trader north of Taksim Square seemed to have left his cat in charge of a tray of watches. She was an enormous fluffy tabby and white, like a Norwegian Forest or Maine Coon (not a common kind of cat in Turkey). You could have trained her to inflict serious mayhem on anyone who walked off with a watch, but she just liked to roll over and get her tummy tickled. - the most stunning place for cats I have ever seen anywhere is the island of Heybeliada in the Sea of Marmara. This is carless - there are a few trucks and dozens of horses and carts. The cats mostly hang out around the quayside since that's where the fish is (a few fishmongers, people landing fish, very good fish restaurants). Tabbies, silver tabbies, gingers, calicos, torties, blacks, tuxedo cats, and some very dark torties in a colour scheme I've never seen elsewhere. They form something like queues at the fishmongers waiting jXwXeXrXmXoXnXt...
for donations (or for the fishmonger to give up for the day and dump his stock). I didn't see any cats on the ferries but they must stow away and cross the Bosphorus all the time to commute intercontinentally between fish markets in Europe and Asia. ============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ============== Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760 stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557 mlbriggs...
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