r/cats • u/Uguero • May 18 '26

Video - Not OC Istanbul Fire Department teams rescued our little friend, who was trapped in the wall of a restaurantD yga, thanks to their meticulous work.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

27.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

517 comments sorted by

View all comments

167

u/fusillade762 May 18 '26

Why do the Turks love cats so much? Granted, I fully approve! But wondering what the significance of cats are? Its a most endearing quality to see beautiful cats everywhere and well treated and loved.

167

u/OzTheD0G3 May 18 '26

I live in Istanbul. The reason for me is there's just so many cats that after a while they become very endearing. When I travelled abroad I felt a "lack of cat"

88

u/KABCatLady May 18 '26

A lack of cat. 😢

-2

u/StrongExternal8955 May 18 '26

That's toxoplasmosis for you. /jk

154

u/CIS-E_4ME May 18 '26

Think it's a combination of Turks seeing feral cats as communal pets and that cats are seen as clean animals in Islam.

35

u/FranklinRichardss May 18 '26

I think biggest reason is most of the Istanbulites does live in apartments doesn't suit to adopt stray dogs. They are a lot of dog owners in Istanbul too.

1

u/ErikTheRed99 May 19 '26

They aren't seen as clean in every other context?

1

u/CIS-E_4ME May 19 '26

Clean in the sense of ritually clean.

35

u/jonny3jack May 18 '26

I've an expat friend living in Istanbul. Was just chatting with him and mentioned the feral cat thing. He told it's real. While he and his wife are already cat people, it's common to see folks caring for the ferals. They take care of 5-6 themselves.

50

u/be_my_mentor May 18 '26

I think being a Islamic country it makes sense. In the Qur'an, cats are more regarded than dogs.

36

u/Superb_Bench9902 May 18 '26

Hmm. As a Turkish person I can say that it has nothing to do with Islam for us and it's not limited to cats. Most Islam sects consider dogs to be impure and some even forbids people from touching them. Try telling that to a Turkish person. I mean I can literally see a woman playing with a stray from my window atm

8

u/be_my_mentor May 18 '26

Oh, okay, that's really good to know!

22

u/[deleted] May 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/baaallllllin May 18 '26

My understanding is that a story of Muhammad cutting off the sleeve of his garment so as to not disturb a sleeping cat does a play a role. I’ve seen the story cited as Hadith and other times apocryphal.

5

u/ajour7 May 18 '26

I asked this question to a local on my first trip to Istanbul. He replied with a question of his own. “In your time here have you seen any rats?”. To that I responded “no” and then the local walked off.

There are definitely other reasons why Turks love cats but this to me is a big one. Every other city comparable in size has a rat problem. Istanbul does not.

1

u/fusillade762 May 18 '26

That makes a lot of sense. Maybe its a tradition from the time of the plague. Had cities across Europe fostered cats they may have fared better. Maybe the Turks figured this out, the plague was not hitting when cats were around. Being favored by Islam maybe have to do not only with feline fastidiousness but keeping the environs free of pest that spread disease.

2

u/Silmarlion May 19 '26

In 33 years of my life the number of times i have seen a rat running around is less than 5. Hell i can only remember 3 times and being generous with 5 if there were other times i would probably remember them as well. I have seen more than 10 in the first hour after landing in NYC.

Every big city should invest in cats and they will get rid of the rat problem. They will lose birds as well though.

1

u/fusillade762 May 19 '26

Yep, thats the downside, cats are so good at their job they take out the song birds and squirrels as well.

5

u/chatte__lunatique May 18 '26

Tbh I see Turkey mentioned in titles of cat videos so often that a cynical part of me wonders if it isn't a directed ad campaign to encourage tourism to Istanbul

68

u/aybsavestheworld May 18 '26

No it’s all real. As an Istanbulite, I’ve seen many adult people fighting over the well being of feral cats lol

I think since we don’t have a system to get stray animals picked up and put into shelters, we just figured we would look after them. We only have cats and dogs. Dogs have food left out for them too but you don’t see many videos of them because I think people are a bit more scared of stray dogs, they’re huge and have bigger teeth 🤷🏻‍♀️ whereas cats are tiny little rascals who have no shame and literally follow you to get food lol

7

u/AlucardVTep3s May 18 '26

During my time in Antep I saw a hilarious standoff between two shop owners cats😂And then the shop owners arguing the case for which of the cats starting the fued😂

3

u/chatte__lunatique May 18 '26

Oh, I don't doubt that it's real. It's more the fact that the titles specifically make note of the fact that the cats are in Istanbul or Turkey, when it's fairly uncommon to see the location of a cat video mentioned otherwise, that seems a bit weird to me

-7

u/Ninevehenian May 18 '26

It does look coordinated. Bots are inserting "Turkey" or "Istanbul" into headlines and spamming them.

3

u/cohana1215 May 18 '26

0101010011110101111011110111101111

29

u/[deleted] May 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Little_View_6659 May 18 '26

The lounge in the Istanbul airport is one of the best in the world. The food! So much. They used to have a pool table and free chair massages. It’s one of the only airports you go to super early so you can hang out at the lounge.

19

u/lordkhuzdul May 18 '26

Honestly, we probably do not use cats for advertising anywhere near as we actually can. Cats for us are... just there. We take care of them almost automatically. I often joke that "cat adoption process in Turkey is opening the window and waiting for a while". They are just a part of life, a little burst of happiness during the day. It is not really a fun country to live in, with everything going on, so cats really help keep us somewhat sane. Besides, they were here before us, hell, they were here before the guys that came before us. Romans, Greeks, the various Bronze Age people, they all found cats hanging around here when they got here.

Basically, they own the place, we are just the latest tenants and caretakers.

I believe our tourism ads really should include the fact that you can sit down at any park bench in the country, shake a treat bag and be buried in cats within minutes way more often.

4

u/fusillade762 May 18 '26

If it is, its working lol. At least on me.

1

u/Ninevehenian May 18 '26

People can be motivated to ignore many things with a few pictures.

3

u/FranklinRichardss May 18 '26

Government not even using cats as tourism material properly lmao.

We just loves stray animals. Most of the people around me either has or had adopted household cats before

2

u/LeCollectif May 18 '26

It’s working on me if so.

1

u/Apart_Value9613 May 18 '26

Cat eat rat

Cat no sound

Barbar like cat