Turkish kitty delight
Beautifully shot doc highlights Istanbul’s fine history with felines
Call it Byzantium, Constantinople or modern Istanbul, Turkey’s largest metropolis has always been a city of cats. “Cats have lived in what is now Istanbul for thousands of years,” say the opening titles of the documentary Kedi (Turkish for cat). “They have seen empires rise and fall, and the city shrink and grow.”
And they’re decidedly unruffled by it all. In Ceyda Torun’s beautifully shot, feline-friendly film, most of the city’s cats live to eat, sleep and occasionally beg. And while there must be some hard-hearted types who dislike their presence, every Turk the director finds has something nice to say about them.
“If you can’t love animals, you can’t love people,” says one man. Another claims cats make you fall in love again. And a woman likes their feisty displays of feminine energy in a sometimes repressive society. There’s even a fisherman who was directed to pick up a lost wallet by a street cat. It contained the 120 lira — about $40 — he needed to get back on his feet after his boat sank.
“If that’s not a godsend, I don’t know what is,” he says. And it makes sense: While dogs are said to believe that humans are gods, cats actually know God, which is why they treat us as mere middlemen for the deity. (That’s right: Not only is Kedi pro-cat, it’s subtly anti-dog.)
In turn, Istanbul residents are often prepared to play the role of God’s humble servants, feeding and watering and caring for kittens and cats in an increasingly urban landscape. One man used to create crosses for the graves of deceased street cats, which alarmed his mother since he’d been raised a Muslim.
Cats are clearly good for humans, too. More than one person mentions that they absorb negative psychic energy, in much the way a houseplant can sop up toxins from the air. Someone even suggests cats may have taken on early sailing ships to combat cabin fever, as well as to keep the decks free of mice of course.
Viewers may grow tired of the ceaseless anthropomorphizing, although the woman who describes her neighbourhood cat as adopting an insouciant sideways pose while tapping at her window does seem to have a point: The video doesn’t lie.
And the cinematography is gorgeous, alternating between bird’seye views of the ancient city, and cat’s-eye footage from the ground. It’s catnip for cat lovers.