http://www.vnews.com/news/newsletter/16729492-95/cats-demand-and-sometimes-get-reverence
Cats Demand, and Sometimes Get, Reverence
The ancient Egyptians revered and even mummified cats. They also immortalized them with stunning statues of sitting cats, their legs elongated, necks arched, ears erect and a look of arrogant disdain on their rounded faces.
There is no such reverence for cats today around the Eastern Mediterranean.
Roaming cats are synonymous with outdoor restaurants throughout that part of the world. Usually they prowl warily around table legs and human legs looking for bits of meat, but a hierarchy is quickly established if a diner decides to make a substantial contribution to the cats’ diet. At once, the old warriors with torn ears and bare patches of skin where fights have torn off their fur move in and take control. Occasionally they hiss and claw at their fellow elders, but they basically manage to share the food. The younger cats, meanwhile, restlessly pace up and down at a safe distance, mewing their hunger and distress.
Once, at such a restaurant on Crete, Greece’s largest island, a sensible middle-aged British woman watched the cats, particularly the scrawny younger ones, and said, sternly, “See here.” She then shooed the old cats away — with difficulty as they hissed and spat — and somehow managed to keep them at bay as she enticed the younger ones to come to her for food. The little ones ate ravenously and hastily, and constantly glanced over their shoulders to see if they were about to be attacked. The tough old ones stalked, as close as they dared, ears back, yellow eyes narrowed and tails twitching as they barely controlled their rage at their hierarchy turned upside down.
Some years later, another group of hungry cats greeted my husband and me on our first morning in a rented villa south of Florence, Italy. When we opened the door we found four feral cats sitting well apart from each other in our small front yard. They were so grimy, scrawny and undernourished that we felt obliged to seek out a nearby grocery store where a lovely young clerk thought us quite mad to be buying latte for wild cats.
The cats, however, were delighted. Our four cats quickly multiplied to well over a dozen. We found saucers and plastic containers — anything that would hold milk. Though they would not allow us to come close to them, the cats spent part of each day with us, lounging under trees and bushes but always jumping to attention when my husband appeared. They had no gratitude and hissed at him as he poured the milk. Some even jumped up at him, claws bared.
Our final morning, as we contemplated the cats and wondered what would happen to them after our departure (and whether the next renter would curse us!), a mother cat came out of the bushes, tail high, followed by five tiny kittens, their eyes just open. Her timing was poor as the free restaurant was closing.
The lives of our scrawny visitors in no way resembled the lives of their ancestors in ancient Egypt, where killing a cat, even accidentally, could bring a death sentence. Nor would anyone in today’s world ever consider shaving off his/her eyebrows in mourning for the death of a cat.
But not all cats are fighters. Four plump, happy cats entertained my husband and me one lovely, soft evening in Venice as we ate dinner on the terrace/sidewalk outside a restaurant beside a small canal. The lights from the street lamps threw bits of gold onto the rippling canal water, creating reflections of crooked lamp posts and shimmering lop-sided windows. An openwork stone fence edged the canal. At sidewalk level there were half-circle holes, cut at regular intervals for drainage. That evening each hole was filled with a cat. Their heads stuck out over the canal and their gray, black and white furry haunches jutted onto the terrace. Long tails stretched out behind them, twitching back and forth as the cats studied the twinkling, ever varied ribbons of gold on the black water. The cats seemed a bit irresponsible with their exposed rear ends, but no tail was trampled, at least while we were there.
A more sophisticated cat joined us as we dined at a small restaurant in the old section of Istanbul. We were hardly settled at our window table before a gray, well-fed cat leapt onto the sill, in front of the closed window. The cat sat down, curled his tail carefully around his haunches, and watched us eat. It was a little disconcerting, but our visitor, with his unblinking, half-shut eyes, was quiet and aloof and we tried to ignore him. About mid-way through our dinner, however, he decided to try our entrees. Two steps onto the table and we sternly backed him away. Ruffled, he turned his back on us and sat tall and stiff staring out the window, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to check on us with disdain and annoyance.
A year later, we returned to the same restaurant — no cat in sight. We were well into our delicious dinner when my husband let out a startled small scream and jumped to his feet. Silence settled over our fellow diners and all eyes looked at us with alarm. It was our gray cat. Quietly walking under our table, he playfully batted the tablecloth and clawed my husband’s leg. Or was it revenge?
We never seemed to get away from cats. When we rested under a tree outside the Athens Archeological Museum, two cats had a wild, screeching fight above us in the tree, causing leaves and twigs to rain down on us. Another, in Thessaloniki, in northern Greece, stretched his black and white paw down from an overhead grape arbor to create a long scratch on the top of my husband’s head.
The cats abused us, ignored us and were unappreciative of our efforts to help them, but we still felt awed by their scrappy efforts to survive, their unfailing independence and their mysterious aloofness.
No wonder the ancient Egyptians worshipped them.
Mary Jenkins lives in Hanover.
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