In my opening post and the first of my Strolling Istanbul accounts, both written last week when we were total neophytes, I mentioned that there were a lot of cats in this city.

Well, that doesn't even begin to describe the situation...

For a start, there's hardly a surface that's unadorned by a small furry being.





And when you open your front door of a morning, a cat will invariably trot across to investigate whether there's any food going (real Istanbulites, like the lady next door, will routinely put down some cat food on their way out). Or when you're cooking in the kitchen, a cat (or cats) will materialize on the window sill, and even head-butt the panes ("but you don't LIKE vegetable stew," you want to say...) Or as you're walking to the shop, a window opens to your left, and a cat rockets across out of nowhere to make the most of whatever is being proffered. If you sit down on a park bench, the chances are high that some little puss will march up, and even if you're not armed with Go-Cat, s/he will be happy to enjoy a quick purr and a chin-rub.

You often come across multi-storey municipal cat boxes, while little private provisions for cats are legion: a blanket in a doorway here, a communal water bowl there. You often see people's faces softening as some moggy rolls around charmingly in the sun.

So what's going on?

The key idea seems to be that the street cats belong to everyone and no-one. They're not pet cats, but they're not feral either. Here in the centre of town, at least, the vast majority are pretty sleek and plump; they're happy to be around humans, and they're happy to ask nicely (not at all like those memorable cats we came across in Alicante). I'm sure their lives are not idyllic (there are horrible humans here just as there are everywhere else, after all), but overall the arrangement seems to work very well. It certainly gives the city an absolutely unique feel.

For a bit of footage of all this, watch the brief Street Cats of Istanbul, or the trailer for Kedi, a full-length doco about the Istanbul feline phenomenon.

Meanwhile, here are a few more small contributions to cat worship in these parts: