Dispatches From Istanbul
The Rise and Fall of Pasha, the Abbasağa Street Cat
Life isn’t easy for an Istanbul street cat. There are any number of life-ending hazards to avoid, be it from traffic, inclement weather, dogs, other cats, cat-hating humans, or disease. The rough and tumble of life on the streets is a tough game, but cats either cute or pathetic enough to get adopted into a flat can easily put their difficult pasts behind them. Some are lucky enough to be taken in by shop owners and can have a place to sleep or get out of the elements during daytime hours, and a lucky few even strike gold and become restaurant cats.
Pasha had seen some tough days when I first met him. Back in those days he didn’t have an official title. He was just a black and white stray with medium length, mangy and matted fur that sort of came off if you petted him. He had obviously seen his share of fights, with his left ear floppy and folded over. But he was determined to do well for himself; he was working on getting adopted to a restaurant.
Pasha is a resident of the Abbasağa Park neighborhood in Beşiktaş, which is a primarily middle class, secular neighborhood. Istanbul is a city of dozens of different neighborhoods, and the treatment of its street animals vary along with the neighborhood. One walk through Abbasağa park is enough to see how much Beşiktaş loves its cats, with all the deluxe homes that local residents and organizations provide. Pasha caught on that customers who ate at the Eat*Box, a gourmet burger restaurant on the main square of the neighborhood at the top of the park, were susceptible to his charms and were easy targets for a meal.
The Eat*Box was owned by Onur, who had studied gastronomy in the USA and had returned with the idea of selling quality, American style burgers in Istanbul. At first, Onur and the head waiter Yavuz had tried to take care of Pasha by just leaving a bowl of food and water out on the street for him. Not to be deterred from his ambitious climb to the top, however, he kept going inside and sitting impatiently next to customers, almost always charming his way into a snack. Eventually he was adopted and Yavuz and Onur kept his food and water dishes inside with a nice comfortable bed and he was dubbed Pasha.
Insistent, but not annoyingly so, on receiving his fair share of your burger or the meat from your salad (carbs were looked upon with scorn, however), Pasha would sit by your chair for a few minutes until his patience ran out. Then he’d become a bit more demanding, scratching at your legs for a while and eventually climbing into your lap to survey your plate. If Onur or Yavuz were around, though, they’d try to shoo him outside, but in he’d come again, this time to sit in an empty chair at your table and give what he considered his meal a closer inspection.
He began to fill out, his coat began to be less mangy and matted, and he started to resemble a healthy cat. He even started to calm down a bit, becoming less insistent on sampling all of the customer’s meals. He took to surveying the streets from inside, looking down on all the street bums out there who hadn’t pulled themselves up by their paws to become as successful as he had. He had a comfortable bed near the door where he could take long naps in the sun. He was living up to his name and had become regal, in a way. His one floppy ear was a reminder of his humble beginnings and his hard fight to the top, but here he was, a bruised, battered, battle-scarred king, living a well-earned, hard-fought, comfortable existence.
Onur was a talented and ambitious chef, however, and eventually wanted to branch out from the burger trade. The Eat*Box was doing well, so he decided to sell to new owners and open up a new restaurant in Bebek, the elite neighborhood down the hill and up the Bosphorus from Beşiktaş along the waterfront, where people drive around in Maseratis.
Yavuz didn’t stay on with the new owners, but moved across the street to become the manager at Bay Köfte, a run-of-the-mill Turkish meatball restaurant, and Pasha moved with him. It wasn’t as classy as Eat*Box, with an inside only as big as the grill and only two outdoor tables, no more big windows with a sea view, and a different sort of clientele. It was still a restaurant though, so despite the downgrade in status, Pasha accepted the move. I didn’t go to the köfte place very often so I didn’t get to interact much with Pasha in his new residence, but I’d see him whenever I was in Abbasağa, sitting outside his new cafe on a little square of AstroTurf outside the door, watching the street from his makeshift patio. In the early morning, though, he’d be out napping on parked cars, waiting for Yavuz to open.
Last fall the köfte place was taken over by a family not too keen on keeping feline ex-tenants around. With Yavuz looking for employment in some other neighborhood, Pasha got evicted and suddenly was back out on the streets full time again.
FIV (Feline Immunodeficiency Virus) has been sweeping through the cats of Abbasağa park over the past year or so. All of the cats in the park have it, so the local vets say, and the age demographics of the neighborhood represent this trend. A lot of the cats on the neighborhood side-streets have caught the virus as well, as population numbers have plummeted from what they were a few years ago. A time of plague is a hard time to get evicted.
I don’t see Pasha much these days. I had wondered if he’d absconded with Yavuz to some other restaurant, or if he’d fallen victim to traffic, the cold, or the virus. He is still around, though, but he’s been cast out of the garden, condemned to wander until the end of his days. He’s found a new street to call his territory. He’s smart and calculating and has a sense of change in the neighborhood. He’s hanging out now on the road that leads to Bahçeşehir University’s newly added campus. The past six months have seen dozens of coffee shops, restaurants, bakeries open up on the street, which are always full of students. The heavy car traffic is dangerous, but the foot traffic provides the day’s entertainment as well as its sustenance.
Pasha’s putting his dreams of being a restaurant cat on the back-burner for now, as he’s been through a few already. They’re luxurious but require too much dependence upon unreliable humans. He wants something a bit more sustainable for the long term where he’s in control, and so he’s decided to get himself a store. He hangs out now in front of the Şok supermarket, across the street from the vet and a five-minute walk from the trendy cafes. where cuter kittens and clean, younger cats hang out.
Pasha’s a bit thinner now, his fur has some whites shining through, but it fits with his name. He’s mangy, but in an elegant way. The charm is still there; it’s just covered by a few layers of grime. When I’m in Beşiktaş I try to have some cat food on me, and if I see Pasha outside his store I stop to say hello. He’s always cheerful and friendly, happy that there are some still around who remember the glory days of the Eat*Box.
Istanbul is always in a state of flux. Likewise, the dynamics of neighborhoods are always changing as well. And, as Abbasağa continues to change, Pasha will continue to ride out each wave. He might get a new scar or battle-wound, but he’ll continue to wear them with elegance and pride. Be well, Pasha. Kendine iyi bak!
