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[Music] The common view is that Istanbul is a paradise for cats, but is this true? Here's our experience on the ground and our encounters with the locals who interact with them every day. We're going to take you on a walk
Explore Istanbul's cat culture, the community care, and challenges faced by street cats in the Jiung Gear neighborhood.
Key Takeaways
- Istanbul’s street cats are deeply integrated into local culture and daily life.
- Community members play a crucial role in feeding and caring for cats, often voluntarily.
- There is a significant gap between the romanticized image of cats in Istanbul and the harsh realities many face.
- Spaying and neutering programs are essential but underutilized in Istanbul.
- Grassroots efforts and community awareness are key to improving the welfare of street cats.
Summary
- Istanbul, especially the Jiung Gear neighborhood, is known for its deep affection and care for street cats.
- Residents build cat houses and provide food and water on the streets, with many cafes acting as cat cafes.
- Cats in Istanbul have a long history, dating back to Byzantine and Ottoman times, serving roles like pest control.
- The city hosts diverse cat breeds due to its historic role as a trade hub.
- Locals like Ali have dedicated decades to feeding and caring for street cats voluntarily.
- Many cats live on the streets, facing risks like disease and injury, with care often provided by individual rescuers.
- Community groups like 'Xihong Cool for Cats' help network and support cat welfare efforts.
- Despite the perception of Istanbul as a cat paradise, many cats suffer due to lack of widespread veterinary care and spay/neuter programs.
- Advocates call for more realistic portrayals of street cat life and expanded spaying/neutering to reduce suffering.
- The local community’s love and dedication provide hope for the future of Istanbul’s street cats.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
with us in Jiung Gear, an affluent hipster neighborhood on the European side of Istanbul, and we're just going to show you what the day-to-day cat situation is like here. Jiunga is one of the most cat-obsessed neighborhoods in Istanbul. There
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are cats absolutely everywhere, and you'll see cat houses built by residents on the street and food and water bowls on every corner. Some people have dedicated their entire lives to caring for the cats here, and every cafe in the neighborhood is a
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cat cafe. [Music] The little baby. [Music] One shortly into our walk, we stumble upon this little boy. He is completely blind and completely endearing. I mean, just look at that face. This little boy is blind, but he's so sweet, and he loves the pets. Look at
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him. Oh, hey, Mr. Hey, Mr. Sweetheart, you like the pets? You like them? He wants my pets. Yeah, you pet him. Oh my gosh, what a sweetie. So fun fact: apparently all the cats with this fur pattern—so white, orange, and gray or black tabby—are all girls. It's just a
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thing, I guess, right? Goodbye, sweet girl. [Music] Goodbye. Cats have been a part of Istanbul for a long time. There's evidence that they were treated well by
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the Byzantines during a period when there was an aggressive attitude in Europe toward felines, and they were a welcome part of the city during the Ottoman Empire when the majority of houses were made of wood and people used them for pest control. And
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today, well, they are everywhere, as you can see. Look who came up to us. He's [Music] so Istanbul is home to many different breeds of cats, a legacy of its centuries-long role as a major transit point for
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trade. Cats from all over the world disembark from ships here, intermingling and mixing their genes to create a variety of breeds and fur [Music] patterns. As we continue on our walk, we pick up a little shadow. I guess someone loves the pets. It's
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following you. Give you one more scratchy, how about that? She's famous on the internet. Oh, really? We have a thing called Cat Hunter. Okay, you can check her out. Oh, really? It's clear as we're out filming how much
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the locals love the cats too. Every time we're filming them, they stop and talk to us and tell us a little bit about the cats. It's really nice, and Schinka means snowflake in Russian. All right, on to pet more cats.
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It's a hard job, but someone's got to do it. Bye, buddy. CH girl. [Music] How often do you feed the cats? The people of Triang feed the cats all the time. They have a cup for the cats, uh, on the street, like
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24/7, so, uh, that's how they feed them. Like, they never get hungry. B, the cats are the owners of this neighborhood, and we are just cats. Yeah, exactly. We're just here to serve them, right? Yeah. So why do you
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think people of Turkey love cats so much? Not sure it applies to, like, all the cats around Turkey, but I know for Jang, everybody loves the cats. We just got used to living with them, so they're part
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of our lives. Our new friends take us to meet Ali, a man who has been feeding the cats of Xiong Gear for the past 30 years. Could you tell me a little bit about the work you do with the cats
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here? I've been taking care of the street animals for 30 years, over 30 years, because, uh, I have love and conscience towards these animals, and, uh, by doing that, I'm learning how to become even a better human being. And can you
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tell us a little bit about the type of work you do with the cats? Like, it looks like a lot of food, shelter, veterinary care. Like, what does that look like? I see the cats like my kids, as I said. The
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people of Janger are helping us out, and I'm doing this voluntarily, and, uh, I'm an electrician, and I brought all my time out of my birth to these cats. So, and people are putting money into these boxes, and that's how we get money for
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the food and everything. A person who doesn't love cats will never have love for other living beings. Ali takes multiple walks a day every single day to feed the cats in the neighborhood. Stay in Ji Hunger for any period of time, and
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you're likely to see him out and about, and he is well known by all the cats in the neighborhood who immediately run up to him anywhere he goes. He's been doing this every day for 30 years, and oh my goodness, just look at
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how many cats there are. I've never seen this many cats before. Ali works really hard and depends on the community to acquire resources for the cats. One night, we even saw him out working at 1:00 a.m. Now that's
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dedication. If you visit Istanbul in the future and want to help, you can find him in the stairwell across from 21 Restaurant in Jiung Gear. We'll drop more information in the description. [Music] Box found this sweet girl. Think she's pregnant.
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[Music] [Music] May meet Tavuk, the Xihong Gear pickle shop cat. We gave her a nickname after her favorite snack, chicken. She's dangerously cute and sometimes just plain dangerous. This is Budik, our favorite little girl from the pickle shop, but we
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have a nickname for her. We call her Tabuk after her favorite food, chicken, and you have to kind of proceed with caution with her. She's really sweet and talkative, and she'll come up to you and love on you, but every so often she'll
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just like attack you. So she's cute but dangerous. And Jiung Gear, almost every business has a cat, and the owners' stories on how the cat ended up with them all sound really similar. And Budik's owner didn't go to an
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adoption center to get her. He has his pickle shop, and one day she just started coming in, and he started feeding her, and she started sleeping at the shop, and now she is his cat. And that is the story of
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many a Istanbul. [Music] Cats. Oh, you see, you see, she's so sweet, and then she, see, she is cute but dangerous. We all, we both have our battle scars. This one, this one, this one. Yeah, this, everything, everything, but love you. Yeah, but she
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loves you. Istanbul is known as a paradise for cats, and there are many postcard moments, but it's only one part of the story. With so many cats living on the street, many suffer from disease, injury, and neglect, and a lot of the care for these strays
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falls to individual rescuers like Ali, who we met earlier, and Hillary Sable, the founder of Xihong Cool for Cats, a Facebook group for the neighborhood to network and communally care for the cats. When I see films like Kitty or people
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making these happy clappy postcard videos of all the lovely cats, I, I could weep. Hillary is from the UK and has lived in Istanbul for the past 18 years, over 10 of them in this Jiung Gear apartment. She shares her space with five rescues.
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So the perception internationally is that Turkey is a cat heaven of sorts where cats are really happy and well taken care of. I'm just curious about your general thoughts about that. It's not true. There are people who leave food
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out and water, but if they see a cat in distress, they won't necessarily take it to the vet. Most of that falls on people like those in my group. So, uh, for the makers of KY, you know, a middle finger to you because
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you have done more harm to the animals who are homeless in Turkey. For Hillary, the solution is a reality check on the true condition the cats are living in and a widespread rollout of spaying and neutering programs. There
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is no reason why the spaying and neutering program shouldn't roll out and save millions of animals from lives of misery, but it's just not happening. Is there anything that makes you optimistic about the future of cats in Istanbul?
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The people who do give a damn, the people who are on my group, the people who are on the street. I'm not saying that everybody is uncaring or cruel, but we certainly have our fair share here. Whether it's more than anywhere
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else, probably not, but because of the volume of animals in this country, it really shows. And what do you want to say about it? Putting water in the food is really good for cats. On top of her five cats
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at home, Hillary takes care of 50 cats or more. Li
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oh I feed them I make sure that they're healthy if they're not healthy I take them to the vet um and basically I'm just doing what a lot of other other members of my group and others do Come On
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Dave Dave so what's our verdict on the cats of Istanbul there are many Beautiful Moments of locals caring for and sharing space with cats more than anywhere else we've seen in the world yet with a sheer volume of cats trying to survive in a
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city of 20 million many cats lead lives of hardship so with ist stemble cats as with most other things multiple truths coexist
Topics:Istanbul catsstreet catsJiung Gear neighborhoodcat carecommunity animal welfarecat rescuespaying and neuteringcat cafesurban catsanimal welfare Turkey
