I heard tell of a story in the Quran that a cat once fell asleep on the prophet Mohammed’s cloak and instead of waking the cat or chasing it away, he cut around the cat and left it sleeping on the cat-shaped bit of cloth. Because of this story, many Muslims apparently venerate cats (and dogs are relegated to the “filthy animal” status as discussed at great lengths in Pulp Fiction) and one of Istanbul’s features was the incredibly alert cat population. So vibrant, in fact, that a few years before I arrived the city did a massive cat holocaust because the cats were ganging up in a way that was actually frightening and threatening their human counterparts.
Dilko, Steve’s school, in fact saved a female cat I would soon name Izzy from the cat holocaust and during our time in Bakirkoy she would have three litters of kittens. Izzy was a strange cat. She had this crazed look in her bright green eyes that were the size of marbles in her lemon-sized head. I named her Izzy because her strange colouring looked much like a lizard, with odd brown, black and tan stripes in haphazard patterns all over. Steve took to calling her Iggy, because she reminded him so much of Iggy Pop in his crack days, all bug-eyed and psychopathic. Izzy was extremely friendly, unless there was food involved and then she got extremely aggressive. She scratched me a few times and for the most part, Izzy and I did not really become friends until we were getting ready to leave Istanbul.
During our first week in Bakirkoy I had already made friends with four cats. Saucy and her daughter Friskie and Duckie, along with Tommy (Izzy didn’t show up until a little while later, when she realised there was food to be had on our balcony). Tommy was an orange and white cat, quite small, with penetrating green eyes. He was my favourite right from the get-go. We had some kind of instant connection, and he would turn out to be my best friend in Bakirkoy. Well, he and a few others who I’ll get to later. Some of the girls next door who also worked at Dilko said they would see him outside their door, crying for food. We could only figure that his previous owner had lived there and s/he had left Tommy behind. Tommy was very young when I met him, and it took some time to figure out how young exactly seeing that I’d never really been that attracted to cats since I’m allergic to them. I also always thought of them as such selfish and arrogant creatures. They aren’t loving and kind like dogs, they have no compassion and no unconditional love and support to offer.
But anyway, I really liked Tommy. I got him a little orange bowl and I would spoon out Whiskas for him. I got two more little bowls and ended up feeding Saucy and her kids too in the beginning. However, it was quite obvious to all parties that I favoured Tommy over the rest. One day, just before Steve and I were to go to Erdek, a seaside town, with some of his colleagues, there was a horrible screaming outside our window. I’d never heard a real-live catfight before and I was shocked at how much it sounded like humans killing each other. Horrifying. When I went outside to look, there was my little Tommy, bleeding profusely from a huge hole in his throat. Someone had tried to tear his throat out!
I had no idea what to do, since Tommy was a stray and I wasn’t sure if he was used to being touched or not. Steve and I made him a little place in our kitchen and somehow managed to get him inside onto it. Little Tommy sat there shaking and bleeding, jumping at every little noise he heard. It was so horrible. On top of that, we were meant to go away for the weekend and I was just about ready to cancel the whole trip to stay with my new little friend. But we left him a lot of food, water and the balcony door cracked open. We locked our kitchen door and hoped for the best. When we came back from Erdek Tommy was indeed still alive and for a couple months he slept on that pallet in our kitchen. His wound healed and there was such a rapport between him and us. Eventually, when he was much better, he began coming up to me to pet him, raising his little orange and white head up to my hand and purring even before I would touch him. Soon, he was sleeping on a chair in our hallway and he would stay there all day and all night even. He would come and cuddle with either Steve or I as we watched movies. I got him a wonderful tea tree oil flea collar which he very gladly allowed me to put on him. Oh, he looked so handsome with his green collar that almost perfectly matched his eyes!
Then, one day, he didn’t come back. Or the next day. Or the next day. It was about two weeks before we saw him again, and something was different with him. This was when we realised he was only a kitten when we first met him and I guess he went off to become a man. After his disappearance, he would only come by for a little while at a time and would no longer stay over. He would eat, cuddle for a little while and then off he would go. Soon, he stopped even coming by to cuddle and wouldn’t even let me pet him at all. I used to feed Tommy in our kitchen so the others wouldn’t get his food, but for some reason, he was totally freaked out by our house (a story I’ll get to later) and wouldn’t even come inside.
In the two months before leaving Istanbul, I noticed that Tommy was acting extremely strangely. Once, I put out some hot dogs for him and he was acting as if he was on acid or something. Like the sausages were trying to attack him and every time he would put his face near them, he’d jump back as if the hot dog tried to bite him. It was so bizarre. Then I noticed that his skin was really bad, and tufts of fur had fallen out all over. I don’t know if it was mange or something else, but my handsome little boy had turned into a scruffy and diseased looking cat. Just before we left, there was another fight between him and someone else and the side of his face was sliced open. Poor thing.
But there was nothing more that I could do for him. I could see that he still knew what we had done for him, that we had saved his life at least once, and there was a recognition and gratefulness there. Part of me thinks that even when he stopped letting me pet him and stopped coming inside was even for my protection. That he knew he was sick and didn’t want to hurt me. He was such a special little creature and I miss him terribly. I always will remember him as my best friend in Istanbul and I hope one day he’ll visit me in my dreams.
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