Here's looking at you, kid!!
Greece and its cats -- the combination of the two is a fascinating study... a study of a country that deals with stray animals differently from those of us who live in more more northern more western, more Protestant-oriented countries.
And yet, why not do what Greece does? Why not -- in a climate where people are mostly outdoors year round, in a climate where you have your doors and windows open all the time?? How could anyone possibly hope to keep pets inside?
If I understand the Greeks' attitude to cats and dogs right right, Greece keeps her strays healthy by doing periodic round ups of strays, then vaccinating them, and then letting them go again. And it seems to work fine.
Everyone feeds them. If you sit in a Greek restaurant in summer, you are most decidedly outside IN FRONT OF the restaurant on the sidewalk or in a large PLACA under umbrellas eating your food --- or more so enjoying your food and the company of all your friends, relatives and neighobors. Greek spend countless hours in this fashion, and cats walk around between the people begging for scraps, after which they sleep on vacant seats.
They are also to be found by the back doors of restaurants in hopes of octopus, shrimp, or chicken scraps.
Cats are everywhere in Greece.
-- sunning themselves in the middle of the sidewalk, on streets -- any place they feel like it. Perhaps in the shade --
Or out in the sun.
I met this fine fellow below on the long winding way up to Agamemnon's castle at Mycenae. Perhaps a descendant of one of Clytemnestra's cats. :)
And I saw this lovely female sitting on a column that had fallen over at the ancient temple of Apollo in Corinth.
At the ancient Byzantine city of Mistra in the Southern Peloponnese near Sparta, I spotted this one looking from a balcony into a courtyard -- a courtyard of one of the many many churches at Mistra. (A paradise of medieval Orthodoxy!!)
In south-eastern Greece at Monemvasia--in a fairy-tale dream of a medieval town on top of an island rock (potentially the most romantic spot on Earth)--this cat resting on the cobble stones caught my attention as I rounded a corner of one of their narrow stair-step streets.
In Mistra, also, by the women's monastery [an active monastery still functioning today], long a lovely walkway, lined with flowers, these two kittehs were snuggling on the warm sidewalk.
And again long shop windows in Monemvasia, two sweet cats are enjoying the sunshine on the warm rock ledge.
And here, my last picture. Cats on either side of the gate/fence that lets you into the Acropolis in Athens:
Cats may seem a strange focus for a blog, let alone for a photo quest when far from home, but these cats illustrated much of the Greek lifestyle to me. Live and let live. Relax, enjoy. It is hot in the summer in Greece, and cats (like their human counterparts) know that the best way to get through summer is to enjoy it. And that is best done by relaxing outside in the heat of the day and come out at night to enjoy the cool.
My impression of the Greeks is that they live and love life, in spite of austerity, in spite of all that may plague them financially. They are a generous people, who always give --- go to a restaurant and at least one of the things they bring you is an item that you did not order, something they just WANT you to have -- be that a plate of fruit, a special drink (alcoholic or not), bread, a salad. They just give to every one of God's creatures -- give because so long as they have, they will share. Even with a cat.
The Greeks I saw keep things clean, healthy and orderly. Yes, that was my impression of Greece -- not this dirty disorderly country people like to think of as modern Greece. Greece is clean, safe, and wonderful. No, not fanatically orderly like the north (in Denmark where I also went this summer), but safe and functional with consideration for all God's creatures. Cats are persons too (as Garrison Keillor likes to point out) and the Greeks with their Orthodox spirit which honors life, honors all living things, will feed and take care of their stray cats and dogs both.
Be kind to all God's creatures,
It's what He asks of you.
To make their lives more pleasant,
Do all that you can do.
Take pity on God's creatures,
Show tenderness and love;
Then there will be much treasure
Awaiting you above.
Be kind to all God's creatures,
It's what He asks of you.
Remember that love sent out
Will come right back to you!
~ James Rowe
