How to survive as a Turkish Street Cat, Part One, By Pişi

Well, one way to make it in the wild and woolly streets of Turkey is to find a mosque or other public place where the folks will take care of you or feed you.  One cat mecca in Turkey is Istanbul, where cats can get adopted by hotels, where they'll get fed all sorts of nice things by people from all over the world.

I was only in Istanbul once, when I was on my way to America.  But you know, I had no idea I was on my way to America.  After four years of keeping me in four rooms so far above the street I couldn't really see much of what was going on down there, my human decided to take me with her.  Somewhere.  I had no clue where.  All I know is she put me in a dark bag and I slept until we arrived in Istanbul.

Of course I wanted to see the streets of Istanbul!  But there I was, stuck with YouKnowWho.  She was very hard to be around, too.  You see, I can't hear, so I have to use some of my other senses, and I really use my radar sense a lot, and TheBigTwoLeggedOne was just sending off all these confused signals.  I tried to escape once; she was driving me so crazy.

Didn't work.  She was dead set on taking me with her.  I did get the opportunity to see a lot of the city, because we had to go to three different offices, in three different parts of town, to get my "passport" complete.  Really.  She had to take me to a couple of these places, so they would be sure she wasn't taking some valuable Van Cat out of the country.

But no, it was no valuable rare, swimming, blue-green eyed freak.  It was just lil' ol' me.

Now, look at this -- if I could have stayed in Istanbul, I might have even met the President of the U.S.A.

Well, that's one smart street cat.  But honestly, life hasn't been all that bad.  I always did want to travel.  And boy have I!  Tell ya more later

Before I go, I'd like to tell you about a couple other blogging Turkish cats -- Findik and Zeytin.  Good names, guys!  They turned me onto the Obama story.  Hope they blog some more!

I'd love to tell you more of my story later -- and I will!  daha sonra!