Letting sleeping dogs lie (on the sidewalk)

They say a society can be judged by how it treats its weakest members. You also might want to take a look at how it treats its over-sexed cats and its fat stray dogs.  

You don't have to look for very long to find the strays in Istanbul. In my new neighborhood of Teşvikiye, the homeless dogs spend most of the day sleeping under a tree in a nearby park, or in the middle of the sidewalk near the dolmuş stop. People walking by slow down to step over and around them, like fur-covered pedestrian speed bumps. The size of the dogs' bellies demonstrate that they are well fed, if not particularly well exercised.

The neighborhood stray cats, meanwhile, are on constant prowl behind my apartment building, apparently looking for food and, um, a good time. The screeching sounds I hear make me wonder if I am living in one of Istanbul's wealthiest neighborhoods, or a forest in Madagascar. Seriously now: are these cats, or are they howler monkeys?

Perhaps at one time the stray dogs would have kept the cats honest, or at least forced them to be more discreet in their mating rituals. But the dogs aren't moving. They are back at the dolmuş stand, taking another nap and waiting for more kibble.

Urban wildlife is just not what it used to be.

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Sad dogs in the street are nothing new for the İstanbulu.  When Mark Twain came to then-Constantinople he wrote that he had never seen such "doleful-eyed and broken-hearted stray dogs" anywhere else in his life.

In 1910, the Ottomans made an unsuccessful attempt to get rid of the strays by rounding them up and shipping them to an uninhabited island in the Marmara.  Ten years after that the Ottoman Empire disappeared forever. The wild dogs of Istanbul returned and are still here, providing further evidence that: a) karma's a bitch, and/or b) there really is a reason that "Dog" is "God" spelled backwards.

Ever since the ill-fated dog deportation, Istanbul has been trying to figure out what to do with its homeless dogs and cats.  It's clearly still a work in progress.  

Not that Istanbul is the only city in the world that's ever had to deal with a stray animal problem.  In America, our solution has been to round up the strays and put them not on an island but in a cage, euphemistically called an animal "shelter".  Sometimes, a lucky stray gets adopted from the shelter. More often than not it doesn't, and then you know what happens. True, the strays are no longer living on the street.  Unfortunately, they are no longer living at all.

So far that's the most humane idea we've come up with.

There are animal shelters in Turkey, but that's not where most of the strays are.  Instead they are all over the city, lying on sidewalks and napping under bushes.  This is the compromise the city has made.  It is not exactly a policy of live and let live.  It's more like, live on the street, but at least let them live. 

I'm not talking about complete animal anarchy. The stray dogs at least, are (in theory) caught, spayed or neutered, and like prisoners on a work-release program let back out into society to fend for themselves.  The street dogs also get a different colored plastic chip clipped in their ears.  I'm assuming this is not for fashion purposes and that someone, somewhere, is at least keeping track of them.


If there is a similar spay/ neutering program in place for cats, all I can say is that it doesn't seem to be working very well.   The male cats are out screeching on a regular basis, either while entertaining a special "lady friend" or protecting their territory from interlopers.  

In the spring you can see the resulting litters of kittens all over the city.  Meanwhile, the Tom Cats wander off, looking for another free meal and next season's conquest.  The deadbeat dads of the urban animal world.


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I'm not trying to argue that what they do with the strays in Istanbul is necessarily better.  I'm just telling you that what they do is different.  And I can't help feeling that what they do is somehow reflective of a general attitude that doesn't exist everywhere in the world.

With the stray animals living on the streets, for the most part it is up to the people of Istanbul to take care of them.  From what I have seen, they actually do.

Yes, part of this care is still done by the government.  In Teşvikiye, the local municipality has constructed several dog houses for the strays.  The dog house closest to my apartment comes complete with a door mat, because, you know, you wouldn't want the stray dog that's been sleeping on the sidewalk all day to track mud in the house.

Granted, I've never actually seen a dog in one of the dog houses, but if nothing else these serve as a central location for people to drop off food.  Signs on the dog houses ask all Hayvan Dostuları, or "Animal Friends," to please only leave dry food.  Food always seems to be there.  Judging from the size of some of the dog bellies, it looks like they've gotten their fill of it.

Seeing this, you might be tempted to think that the stray dogs have a pretty sweet deal in Istanbul.  But keep in mind that Teşvikiye is one of the city's more better-off neighborhoods.  Not every mahalle has people with the time and money to be continually topping off dog food bowls. 

Also, the strays in Teşvikiye have to be constantly reminded of how the Other Half lives. This is a neighborhood where the dogs that sleep inside - the purebred silkies, pugs, and golden retrievers - get gourmet food and their own paid dog walkers.  Then again, in the window of a pet supply store around the corner from my apartment hangs a silver lamé, fur trimmed dog coat, just in case your schnauzer has nothing to wear to the Lady Gaga concert.   If this humiliation is the price of domestication, I have to believe most of the strays would just as soon sleep in the park.

Still, even the stray dogs in the less-affluent neighborhoods are taken care of.  Near my old apartment in Cihangir, there was a sweet old dog whose home was a piece of cardboard she slept on, outside of one of the neighborhood gida stores.  She was so old and arthritic she had trouble getting up from the ground.  But she was well-fed, and still good natured enough to wag her tail if she recognized you. 

She had survived a long time.  She certainly had survived a lot longer than she would have left unadopted in a typical animal shelter.

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People in Istanbul may be slightly less sympathetic to the stray cats, if for no other reason than there are so many more of them.  At the outdoor cafes the begging cats can get so numerous that they eventually have to be shooed away like pigeons, or overly aggressive squirrels.

But all around the city the İstanbullu put food and water dishes out for the cats as well.  Some people set up little shoebox-like cardboard cat houses outside of their apartment windows.  The more industrious will cover the cardboard houses with plastic, so they don't disintegrate after the first rain storm.


In other places, the volunteer care is more centralized, if somewhat haphazard. On a scruffy little hillside parklet called Gümüşuyu Parkı off a busy street in central Taksim, a virtual cat shantytown has sprouted up, complete with a covered feeding trough and a slope-roofed metal shed containing nine little shoebox kitty apartments.

The park apparently is the Club Hedonism for all male cats in the greater metropolitan area, with plenty of food, water and, you know, companionship.  Walking by this spot every morning during the spring I witnessed so much cat sex that I began to wonder if Barry White music was being piped out of the feeding shelter.  

I have to tell you, even if you love cats, the cat village is not really a pretty sight.  Many of the cats are living a hard life, and they look it.   Tails are bent, ears are partially bitten off, and many look as if they decided fur grooming was a luxury they could no longer afford.  

Still, every day someone comes to the little park, puts out water in a makeshift plastic bowl, and pours out cat food for all who want it.  Again, from what I can tell, no one goes hungry.  Often the dry food is just scattered on top of a concrete wall, but I've not seen any of the cats complaining. 

True, this ain't the Ritz.  But it's not the pound, either. 

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Walking home on a recent afternoon, I spot a big, shepherd-mix stray sitting atop a brick wall in the shade of one of the city's mini parks.  He pants while he watches me cross the street and walk toward him.

A stray dog on the wall!  How wacky and quaint, I think.  These Street Dogs of Istanbul are living quite the life, aren't they?   A perfect picture for the blog.

I stop about six feet from the dog and reach into my jacket pocket for the camera phone.   The dog stops panting.  As I hold the camera up, he starts to growl.  I lower the camera.  He resumes panting.

After a few seconds, I again raise the camera and once again try to take his picture.  This time he stands, snarls, and begins barking at me like I'm breaking into the auto parts lot after dark.

A man walking by, with no discernible connection to the dog at all, goes to the dog's side, puts his hand on the dog's back and shushes him.  The dog stops barking and lies down.  I put the camera away, and he's fine again.  The panting resumes like nothing happened. 

The message seems clear enough to me:  No pictures, pal. We're just dogs that live outside. Just because we sit on park walls and sleep on the sidewalk all day doesn't make us freaks.

All we're asking for is some food, a place to lie on the ground, and perhaps a little dignity.  Other people around here seem to understand that.  Pay attention, and you might figure it out, too.