Thread: Istanbul cats
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Old January 4th 07, 11:16 PM posted to rec.pets.cats.anecdotes
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Default Istanbul cats

Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:

Jack - did you take any PICTURES??


Nope. I don't have a digital camera (they just don't work for the
sort of pictures I take, too slow to operate); quality film and
processing is too hard to find in Turkey; and the current climate of
official paranoia means any film I shot could be vandalized by x-ray-
wielding "security" thugs. So I've given up travel photography


That's a shame! What if you mailed rolls of film to your home (or to a
friend's home) in Scotland, and got them developed once you got back?

I'm curious about the slowness of digital cameras. I've noticed that
some people get incredibly exact photos, with no blurring whatsoever,
of moving objects using a digital camera. I've seen photos of hummingbirds
taken on digital cameras, which look like they're frozen in midair, clear
as can be.

I'm not talking about *my* digital camera, by the way, which is cheap
and crappy (it was a "gift" from a vacation real estate company), and at
this point it's broken anyway. But when I took pictures on it, everything
looked blurred! I have always believed that was a problem of a "slow
shutter", and that you can get clearer pictures of moving objects, the
faster your shutter is. But I really know next to nothing about
photography, so perhaps my information is way off-base.

If you feel like expounding on this subject, please feel free - just,
please, keep the techno-jargon to a minimum. Talk to me like a rank
layperson.

Sufis have saints?


That's the usual word Sufis writing in English use.


I didn't know that. Interesting.

: seeing so many homeless cats, even if they are relatively healthy,
: would make me very, very sad.
: They may lead a relatively decent life (enough food, etc.) but you
: know they don't have a human to love and spoil them.


The ones I was talking about attach themselves to workplaces rather
than houses. Turkish workers can put in very long hours, so they
probably get more human contact than they would left to themselves
all day in a commuter's empty house. There are homecats as well,
of course.


Whenever I hear people talk about the tragedy of "homeless ferals", who
have no humans to love them, I'm always a bit skeptical. I know it's
wonderful when someone takes in a cat, takes good care of them, and
showers them with love, but why do all cats *need* a human to love them?
If a cat is feral, then they're not socialized to humans (or they were
at one time, but have "forgotten" it). So why would they need humans to
love them? If they live in a colony, then they have each other. I would
assume that would be enough, in terms of "love".

Getting their material needs met is another matter. In many cases,
there's not enough food for them to catch, and some of them don't know how
to hunt. Domestic cats living on urban streets, with no intervention at
all from people, do have great difficulty surviving. But if a feral colony
is being well fed and cared-for (ie, medical needs), what is missing from
their lives? I think there might be a bit of projection on the part of
people who look at cats in a well-managed feral colony and feel sorry for
them. Perhaps they have really good lives!

: Istanbul is, unfortunately, a city in the third world


No more so than New York. Its wealthy people are not much less
wealthy than the American rich, and its poor are certainly not as
badly off as America's poorest. No way is a place like Heybeliada
"third world" - by any imaginable standard its quality of life is
far higher than the Scottish village I live in (unless you count
having a car as significant, the zoning laws absolutely ban them).
I'd swap in a minute if I could afford it.


Now I *really* want to go!

Joyce