Sleeping Beauty, Empty Belly

You have probably noticed that tourists from wealthy countries have cultivated the ability to look at poverty and call it quaint, or to see privation as picturesque -- especially when looking through their cameras.  


There is no shortage of reflection on the ability of the camera to shape our perception of reality, to "de-contextualize" what is in front of it, to make the mundane seem interesting, to render the ugly and profane strangely beautiful, and above all to distance the viewer morally from the thing depicted.  "To suffer is one thing," Susan Sontag once noted, but "another thing is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not necessarily strengthen the conscience and the ability to be compassionate.  It can also corrupt them" (from On Photography, 1977, p.20).


As if to illustrate this, someone recently posted the photograph below at Flickr (I'm probably violating a copyright by reproducing it here) with the title "Sleeping Beauty of Foça".   You can see the original HERE, along with several unfortunate reader comments.

As I happen to be living in Foça, this is a sight I see dozens of times every day: a potentially beautiful, but filthy, dirty cat sleeping . . . . in an open garbage dumpster.


Why is it sleeping there?  Because it is a comfortable place to rest?  Because that is where happy, well-fed cats go to wile away the afternoon?


Isn't it pretty to think so?


The cat is sleeping there because it is waiting --  waiting for someone to come along and throw in the next bag of food scraps, which will inevitably be mixed with coffee grounds, tea leaves, disposable diapers, and god knows what else.  Garbage is the sole food source for cats like this one, and so it waits for the next rotten load.  The food waste here isn't like that of, say, Notting Hill.  Its journey to the dumpster doesn't pass through Whole Foods or some fashionable delicatessen.  By the time it reaches these receptacles it seems unfit even for flies, but that is the starting point for cats like the one above -- and those below:

 

To see some other "Sleeping Beauties of Foça," take a look at the photos  HERE  (click on "slideshow").
 
Some of these dumpsters are unbelievably foul smelling.  In some places the local people won't even go close enough to throw their trash into them, preferring instead to throw it at them, so it can accumulate on the ground, as seen below:

 

The dogs and cats, naturally, rip the bags open and scatter the contents in search of edible bits.  The locals then blame them for making the mess in the first place, and so on.


Any rational person would see this as a sad state of affairs for which humans bear some responsibility, yet note the extent to which the comments posted in response to the Flickr photo are oblivious to the problem:


"Lovely picture."   "Kittens everywhere!!  How wonderful."


Yes, it is -- if you like seeing them bone thin, diseased, blind, and abandoned by mothers who cannot feed them.   See, for example, the little slideshow at the bottom of this page.


I brought one of them home a few weeks ago.  It was already well beyond food and medicine.  All I could do is give it a clean, quiet place to die, and then wait.  I didn't have to wait long.  The experience was repeated two weeks later with another one.  It was covered with flies when I found it, though it was still breathing.  The smell was horrible, but I brought it home and let it die in peace.  


Foça is "well known for its pretty cats," reads the caption under the Flickr photo.   Yet there is not a single Veterinarian in the whole town. 


What does that suggest about the condition of the "pretty cats" -- and about the prevailing attitudes of its nearly 14,000 human residents?


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It ain't pretty

Anyone who has spent any time in the Mediterranean knows that there are stray animals, street animals -- dogs and cats -- nearly everywhere, on every street, down every alley, and of course around every dumpster.

The scene below is not from the streets as such, but it illustrates the extent of the problem.  It was made in one of the Mediterranean's most remote corners:  far out on the Karpaz peninsula of Cyprus.  It is an idyllic scene, in which a dog and some cats inhabit the picturesque ruins of an old Byzantine church at the edge of the sea.  Amid the crumbling walls and faded floor mosaics, they all get along peacefully.  Nearby, there is even a tiny, isolated 'inn' of sorts where they could feed on garbage and handouts. 

   

A few months later they were all gone.  

The nearest village, even the nearest house, was way too far away for cats to find.  The dog might have followed the road and got there eventually, but it would have been unlikely to find a handout.  I lived in that village for nearly a year; the streets there were already full to capacity of other animals.

Professional photographers like Hans Silvester, whose coffeetable books include titles like  Sleeping in the Sun: Carefree Cats of the Greek Islands, give the impression, as does the photo above, that life is good for the animals in the Mediterranean, and that everything is beautiful.

Yet the beauty of the Mediterranean belies the harshness of life for the animals that live here -- not just in quiet, seaside locations the like the one above, but in nearly every street, in every town, every city, and every village across the entire region, from Beirut to Barcelona, from Izmir to Oran.

Addressing the problem will mean acting locally, but so far there is no sign that anyone has set out to think globally about a solution.

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