Cats in Istanbul !

I was looking through the pictures taken in Istanbul by my camera troopers ~ Along, Achik, Haziq and Luqman ~ when I noticed so many pictures of cats.

During our walk on the first day in Fatih, there were five pictures of cats. Then amongst pictures taken at the Topkapi palace, there were more cats! They were every where, in different colours but mostly fat!
Even during our tour to the Princess island, I saw pictures of cats ~ even one where cats and dogs were sun-bathing together in perfect harmony. The Malay adage of "Like cats and dogs" used to described quarelling siblings does not hold true in Istanbul. Over there, cats and dogs do not fight! I wonder why.......

The camera boy assured me that he was taking the cat's picture, and the girl happened to be there! And I said, why didn't you take more pictures of cats where pretty girls happened to be there!! LiL somehow raised her eyebrows ~ disapprovingly! I changed subject to cats and dogs instead.....hehehe.

Below, cats and dogs sunbathing together!!










Intrigued, I made a google search using key words 'cats in istanbul' and found these stories

above: i posed with three pretty furry beings, but no cats happened to be there!!

1. HERE :
I copied the following intro from the blog.

"The British explorer, archeologist Charles Fellows encountered nomadic Turkish tribes on many occasions while traveling in southwest Turkey in 1840. In his book Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Fellows described a typical procession of them:

An old man, and generally his wife, head the clan, which consists of several generations...His son, the master of the flocks, follows with his wife; she is often seated on a horse, with a child in her arms...Asses are allotted to the younger children, who are placed amidst the domestic stores, and never without a pet cat in their arms...

The association of the Anatolians with cats probably goes back many centuries and is still an ongoing affair as revealed by the abundance of cats in Turkey."

2. HERE