The mythical cat

Local legend says that an ancient Egyptian queen brought cats to Cyprus because she missed her feline friends when she married her Cypriot prince charming and moved from the hot dry North African desert to the relative cool of this fertile island paradise. Ok, just to set the record straight, local legend provides the bones of that story and I made up the rest!

That there is no shortage of cats is unquestionably true, and they live very different lives to the pampered pets I know in other places. I haven’t seen a fat one yet (pack your bags Minnie!) Most seem to live in extended families, two, three, even four generations domiciled around the same garbage bin or fishing harbour. Though I have also spotted a few lone operators.

Probably they live everywhere, and it’s just that I happen to have been walking on or close to beaches when I’ve seen them. Many appear to be seaside dwellers. I wonder if they catch their own fish, or just sit on rocks to meditate in the early morning sun.

The sad side of the story is that they breed so prolifically that the population is considered too large to be sustainable. Some people feed them but not everyone is so kind, even to the cutest wee ones.

The option of neutering and releasing them has not caught on to any significant extent, and a 10 euro donation only pays for one cat. Like any kind of subsistence living, only the smart and the strong will survive.