Cat Bridge!

Since moving to Turkey Alan and I have been oh so tempted by the hoards of darling stray cats all over the city. I don’t know whether is has to do with their sheer volume, or that we live in a new country and have a new home and a new life, but all of a sudden I have developed the urge to be a pet owner. 

Many factors have stopped me from scooping one up and taking it home with us.  One major fear has been getting some sick sort of disease like rabies or the plague from these street-roaming, vaccination-free wild animals.  But my sister assured me that as long as I didn’t make-out or share needles with them, I was unlikely to catch anything serious (PHEW, neither of those activities were in the plan).  That being said, no amount of vaccinations, and/or flea medication will cure Alan’s cat hair allergy: factor two. The third problem is that I’m not actually responsible enough to have another living thing depend on me yet.  I don’t want to have to worry about who will feed my cat while I’m on vacation, or how to get it a kitty passport and visa when we decide to move out of Turkey. 

I had considered the idea of having a cat live on our balcony, but felt very guilty about what a small and confining place that would be for an animal that was used to having the whole city to roam on a regular basis.  We live two floors up, too high for a cat to safely jump down, and definitely too high for it to get back up.  I figured that If we weren’t going to offer it the comforts of a warm snuggly home in the winter, and an escape from the heat in the summer, we couldn’t take away it’s freedom to hang with it’s cat crew.

The friendliest cat on the block.  Just after we had trained her to come to our balcony,
our neighbors locked her in heir home.  boo. 

Just when I was beginning to come to terms with the fact that having a cat of our own was just not going to happen, one particular cat wiggled it’s way in.  This sweet little kitty had been extra friendly with us every morning on our way to work.  This evening as we sat on our balcony eating a snack, it stood two stories down and meowed at us to come play with it.  When we didn’t come down, it found a way to jump up onto the first floor balcony, where it looked at us like “I’m almost there.” Next it tried several different angles for climbing up the wall to get to us.  Unfortunately it’s not Spiderman. We enticed it up to the top of the fire escape which is only about a 6 foot leap to our balcony, but for some reason no matter how much Alan tried to convince it to jump, that cat was too smart to commit suicide just to visit us. 

That’s when we decided to help.  We tried to make a bridge using our deck umbrella, but she didn’t think that was a safe idea either. The next night we lucked out and found some wooden planks in the trash! (Ok we WERE looking through trash heaps, but let’s not call it cheap.  Let’s call it recycle-reduce-reuse. And let’s call it financially savvy).  Alan nailed the two boards together to use as a bridge between the fire escape and our balcony, and I made a trail of chicken bits up the stairs and across the bridge. The next morning all of the chicken was gone, and when we called out to the cat she came right up the stairs and across the bridge!   Success! 

Notice the chicken bones....

He only smashed his finger a few times!

We haven’t actually secured a cat as ours, but we have the will, we have a way, we have many different cats to entice into our lives. Hurray. 

A cat named Turkey.  Though we thought the name was just perfect, We are starting to think Chicken is more appropriate.  He scratches in the dirt for worms next door, and he is too skiddish to let us pet him, but he comes bounding over when we call.