Istanbul: Strays

When I was sitting on campus earlier today, watching the stray cats and dogs milling around in their incessant search for food and attention, it occurred to me how normal the sight of stray animals has become. When I first arrived, I couldn’t get over the novelty of having homeless animals perched on every stoop and street corner.

At first we were worried about petting the strays, but one of the college officials assured us that all the dogs and cats have been given their shots. He pointed out that the dogs all have tags on their ears, signifying that they are disease-free.

After living here for a few weeks, my friends and I began to recognize all the local animals since they tend to reside in the same 3-block area—we even named some of the dogs. Brendon (who we recently found out is a girl) lives right near our dorm and since she doesn’t have much of a tail, she wags her whole latter half when she sees us. We also decided that she is married to the dog owned by our dorm’s gatekeeper since the two dogs sleep next to each other, eat meals together, and regularly bicker. Justin is the dog who you can always count on to bark at the passing cars. And David loves escorting us to and from class.

One of my friends is really good at whistling, so occasionally when we go out at night he will let off one of his whistles and all the neighborhood dogs will come running, excited to act as our entourage for the evening.

There are so many friendly cats on our campus that they have become part of the community. People leave food out for them, some professors take in the mothers and their kittens in the spring, and the cats even wander in and out of class. One cat that frequented my sociology course insisted on sitting on someone’s lap every class.