by Grania and Jerry
It’s Caturday again, and there are four stories today.
Roger Ebert gives Kedi, Ceyda Torun’s documentary about the street cat population in Istanbul, four stars.
What is the fascination with cats? I wonder if it’s because cats carry an inherent distance from us within them. They are not balls of unconditional love like dogs. They seem serious and dignified. They withhold themselves. They don’t trust right away. Maybe it’s that withholding aura that makes people draw closer. Maybe it’s because cats don’t wear their Need on their sleeves, like dogs do. If a cat trusts you enough to show you its belly for a pat, you know you’ve done something right. If a cat shows up one day for food, that’s random. If it returns the next day? The cat has chosen you. The residents of Istanbul interviewed in “Kedi” know this, and feel blessed by it.
*********
Next there’s a story from the US. Boston Police Department’s SWAT team has an unofficial cat mascot. They have not been able to entice her indoors so they’ve built her a condo and named her SWAT Cat.
“Officer Jamie Pietroski, a 15-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, stayed late after work for several nights painstakingly preparing Swat Cat’s new home,” writes the department. “The condo features a spacious studio interior layout, a large deck for outdoor dining and glass sliding doors offering panoramic city views.”
*********
Maru, that most famousest of cats, has finally received official recognition – a Guinness World Records title for having the Most views for an animal on YouTube. His staff says: “despite his fame, remains as aloof and as chilled out as ever”.
Here’s a funny video showing what humans would be like if they behaved like d*gs or cats. It shows why I prefer cats to d*gs:
h/t: Su, Diane G., Michael, CF, Blue
On the cat/dog thing – it’s much worse when people do it.
Love the SWAT cat.
My 4 year old neutered male short hair has recently learned (apparently from his outside buddies) to spray to mark territory inside the house. I’m gonna SWAT him if this persists!
I don’t know if these cat tricks have been on WEIT in the past, sorry if this is a duplicate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp-zQ7gQYV0; but, my goodness, it’s a good thing there aren’t cat restaurants, the human servers would be driven crazy — and no “Please” and “Thank you.”
@Jenny. Brilliant! StripeyCat sometimes rang B&WCat’s bell, but StripeyCat still got the treat – I think they should try treating the cat whose bell is rung. See if the cats understand ‘bell ownership’ [the bells would have to be positioned fairly though]
I thought the same thing about StripeyCat’s bell bonging.
Kedi is a wonderful film. Speaking of art, you may enjoy Father John Misty’s new tune, Pure Comedy.
Pure Comedy – https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wKrSYgirAhc
Flo and I and two friends who are presently catless saw the film at the Darkside [local, very funky art theater]. Kedi is more ethnographic than ailuridological in nature — we find that ‘crazy cat lady’ is cross-cultural — crazy cat gents as well.
Not all the cats are on the street, but all seem to be intact — too bad the neuter and release movement hasn’t got to the Hellespont.
Deluged by street cats for 80 minutes, I whiled some of the slow scenes checking out the feline genetics. I was not surprised to see the basic street cat was a non-cobby shorthair — the great majority piebald tabbies. Calicos and gingers were abundant, and a few smoky non-agouti types, but very few black cats, which certainly are common among strays here — I wonder if Turks think they bring bad luck?
One neighborhood, perhaps a bit more upscale with more of the cats indoor/outdoor, seemed to have more fancy variants — some norgie-like longhairs, which a boatman explained as escapees from ships at the old wharfs below. A very few short-tailed cats were visible, and one gentleman had a very well-cared-for Cyrmic [angora-coat Manx], much like our adored Sierra, but mostly tabby, much less white fur. No mention of cat breeding, but my thought is that the full-on bunnytail Manx is unlikely to persist in an open breeding population [cuz homozygous-lethal].
I have this theory that cat-lovers are latent (or active) masochists.
I have an irrational hope for Turkey based on its cats. I hope that a country populated by cat lovers cannot really go to hell. But are actually cats a pan-Turkish thing, or just the cosmopolitan population of Istanbul loves them? Has anyone heard about loved cats in the depths of Anatolia?