Introducing "The Cats I’ve Met"

Tales of Paws and the City from a soon-to-be-ex Istanbulite

Turkey has semi-consciously built itself a reputation as a country where street cats rule, and arguably for good reason. As someone who has spent years in street animal welfare activism and has volunteered in street animal care, I know firsthand that there is little to romanticize about the lives of street animals, and certainly not in Turkey. I am currently finishing a master’s thesis on the institutionalized violence against the country’s street dogs, and while the sight of plump, well-fed, spoiled street cats of Moda or Ankara’s Şimşek Sokak fills me with a joy only a cat lover can understand, I know that the vast majority of Turkey’s street cats live very precarious lives, vying for scarce food and prone to too often vulnerable to human violence.

This does not mean that I don’t see anything to celebrate in Turkey’s urban scenes of human-street animal cohabitation. In fact, as a sociologist whose work touches on the livelihoods of the country’s nonhuman urban inhabitants, I’ve come to see the stories of the many cats I’ve encountered — shared benches with, observed in their mischief, or even cohabited with in public and private spaces — as too precious to keep to myself, or only to those lucky enough to hear them in person.

This newsletter is a personal archive of those encounters. Each post will center on a cat —or a group of them— I’ve crossed paths with over the years: some for a fleeting moment, others who stayed in my life a little longer. Sometimes they will have names, sometimes they will be anonymous, at least to me. Sometimes their stories will end in heartbreak, too.

I’m starting this project now, as I am set to leave Istanbul for the US, where I will be pursuing my PhD studies for some five years, possibly without feline company. In a city where goodbyes are often rushed and rushing does not help you get anywhere (Istanbul traffic, anyone?), and at this particular juncture in my life, writing about cats just feels right.