Felines Everywhere : Cat’s Meow Drives Cairo to Distraction

Hassan Hafez, a senior member of Egypt’s Parliament, was sitting at his desk and discoursing on the merits of using waste water for land reclamation when his exposition was interrupted by a commotion in the hall.

Moments later, a round, furry projectile, slightly larger than a football, flew through the air and landed on Hafez’s desk. Then, scattering papers and pens to the floor, it bounded off and disappeared around a corner, with a broom-wielding janitor in hot pursuit.

Hafez barely had time to recover his papers, if not his composure, when the scene was repeated. The furry football bounded once more across the desk and flew out the door, followed by the red-faced janitor.

There was a moment of embarrassed silence.

Can’t Keep Them Out

“I am very truly sorry,” Hafez said, bending over to pick up his papers again. “But we just can’t seem to keep the cats out.”

There are some who might argue that Cairo, with its noise, its traffic, its pollution and its exasperating but cheerful inefficiency, has gone to the dogs. But those who know this city recognize the absurdity of such a statement. Cairo, they will tell you, long ago went to the cats.

Consider:

-- Cats prowl the corridors of power in the Foreign Ministry, where after hours they can be seen lounging on the delicately carved, gilt antique settees in the diplomatic waiting rooms.

-- Cats cavort on stage at the National Theater, where more than once they have upstaged a mediocre performance, to the chagrin of the performers if not of the delighted audience.

-- Cats routinely slip past the security at Cairo Airport, mingling with the passengers in the departure lounges and occasionally stowing away on an outbound flight.

“Cats are very much a part of life in Cairo,” observed a longtime resident who recently adopted the cat that kept following her into the elevator. “Egyptians don’t much care for dogs, but they pretty much let cats do as they please.”

No one really knows how many cats there are in Cairo, but they can be found just about everywhere.

There are city cats that prowl the back alleys, socialize on the dumpsters and, when the weather is nice, lounge on the roofs of parked cars. There are river cats that hunt mice, rats and other small game along the banks of the Nile. There are even desert cats that live on the Giza plateau and that can frequently be found sunning themselves on the summits of the Pyramids.

Indeed, so ubiquitous are the cats of Cairo that, as this story is written, one is sitting in the writer’s lap.

“No one knows how many cats there are in Cairo because there are far too many of them to count,” Dr. Boulous Malek, a veterinarian and Egypt’s leading expert on rabies, said recently. “In my house alone, we have three or four permanent residents living on the landings and several more in the garden.”

Malek estimates that there must be “five or six cats for every house in Cairo, at the very least.”

Does this mean there are too many cats in Cairo?

“Some might say that,” Malek said, “but those who do should remember that without this many cats, Cairo would have a lot more rats.”

Anyone familiar with feline history knows that Egyptians were the first people cats chose to associate with about 4,000 years ago. From the cats’ point of view, the relationship was put in its proper perspective from the outset: Egyptians worshiped them.

Cats were considered sacred for their eyes which, because they glowed in the dark, were believed to hold the light of the sun and to keep evil spirits away during the night.

Cats Mummified in Past

Among the deities the ancient Egyptians worshiped was the cat goddess Bastet, also known as Bubastis, or Bast. The cats in her temple, near the modern-day city of Zagazig, 40 miles northeast of Cairo, were especially revered and were mummified in ornate wrappings befitting the high esteem in which they were held.

Indeed, the death of a cat was considered an occasion for deep mourning. Herodotus, the Greek historian who visited Egypt in the 5th Century BC, wrote that when a household cat died a natural death, its owners shaved their eyebrows off as a sign of mourning. When a house caught fire, Herodotus wrote, saving the cat was the first priority.

If the ancient accounts are true, the modern notion of femininity owes a large debt of inspiration to the cat. Egyptian women were the first to use eye liner in what was said to be an attempt to duplicate the shape and mysterious quality of a cat’s eyes. Some accounts attribute the idea of walking in a slinky, feminine fashion to an effort by the ancient Egyptians to copy the grace of their cats.

Mohammed Had One

Cats are also esteemed, if not revered, in much of Islam. The Prophet Mohammed is said to have had a cat. According to legend, the reason cats always land on their feet, never on their backs, is because Mohammed used to stroke his cat on the back, thereby charming it.

Nowadays, cats are not held in the same high regard as they once were. Although Cairo, with its dogs, cats, sheep, camels, horses and donkeys, is more of a menagerie than most large cities, few Egyptians own a pet or think of animals as anything other than beasts of burden or a source of protein.

“In general, Egyptians are not pet lovers,” Malek lamented. “Those who do have them don’t take very good care of them.”

There are exceptions, of course.

Woman Has 12 Cats

“One of my clients,” Malek said, “is a woman who owns 12 cats, and every time one of them doesn’t eat for a day she thinks it is dying. She will call four veterinarians to come to her house at the same time, often in the middle of the night.”

Perhaps Egypt’s best-known cat lover is Hassan Fathy, the internationally renowned architect, who lives in a meticulously restored Islamic-era apartment.

“I have 20, maybe 30, cats,” Fathy once told an interviewer. “It all depends on who shows up for dinner that day.”

The U.S. Embassy in Cairo also keeps cats, although the ambassador may or may not know it. Secretaries take turns sneaking out to feed them.

Occasionally, one reads in Egyptian newspapers that an airliner has been forced to return to Cairo because of cats in the cabin. Two years ago, an Egyptair Airbus was grounded for two days while airline personnel tried unsuccessfully to coax a feline stowaway out of the cabin.

But Cairo’s most famous cats are the cats of the Gomhuria Theater. These musical cats have been known, on more than one occasion, to add their unique accompaniment to the arias from “La Traviata.” But theatrical honors go to the cat that turned up on stage, a few years ago, during a piano recital. No one can recall who the pianist was or what he played, but the cat is widely remembered.

Pianist Leaves, Cat Stays

Appearing on stage after the pianist’s concentration had already been broken by the sound of a slamming door and a loudly ringing telephone, this cat crept up to the piano and, evidently fascinated by the quick movement of the pianist’s fingers, leapt onto the keyboard. The pianist, clearly no cat lover, stood up, bowed briskly and stalked off the stage, leaving the cat to bask in the applause of the delighted audience.

The old Gomhuria Theater was itself upstaged by the opening late last year of Cairo’s new opera house, which has yet to become the scene of any great cat story. But that may be only a matter of time.

Magda Salah, a ballerina who briefly served as artistic director for the new opera house, raised her eyebrows the way a cat might arch its back when asked by a reporter recently if cats would be banned from the complex.

“What would Egypt be without its cats?” she hissed. “Of course they’ll be allowed in. Cats are sacred here, you know.”