There’s no avoiding cats in Turkey. We saw them at the bus stop, on the street, outside the storefronts, by the beach, on the rooftop, by the window, in between houses, at the restaurants, under the tree, under the car, on top of the scooter… They are in every and all places imaginable.
When we mentioned this to the locals, they would smile sheepishly and agreed that there is way too many cats. Or they’d say that it’s a national characteristics to love animals. Everyone seems to tolerate the situation, and even embrace the cat overpopulation by building cat park and makeshift cat shelters from cardboard boxes or piling mounds of cat kibbles in random corners where stray cats tend to congregate. While dogs are tagged to keep track of those who are vaccinated and sterilized, nobody pays any mind to the cats. It’s almost as if everyone has already accepted that cats are part of city living.
Once we were sitting at an outdoor restaurant and we heard a commotion behind us. A man at one of the long tables jumped out of his seat, apparently surprised by the cats that just crawled under his seat. “Get them away from me!” he said. He sounded American. Meanwhile a woman, who was part of his table, was busy shooing and trying to pick up the cats away from the table, rather unsuccessfully I must say, as the cats kept coming back. Being an outdoor restaurant, there’s no way for the restaurant to patrol the cat situation. And each time the man would feel the cat brush his legs and he would scream. “I can’t stand cats,” he announced to the whole restaurant, to which another person from the other end of the restaurant replied, “Then you’re in the wrong country, buddy!” Because this is cat country indeed.
