We had just landed in Paphos and were waiting for a bus that would take us from the airport to the city when a white and orange cat, a Garfield incarnate, climbed onto my lap. The cat gave me a few gentle headbutts and snuggled up to me stoically, completely tame and devoid of any fear of humans. Why should he be afraid: judging by his belly, this feline creature was not short of food or attention. In the following weeks, we would get to know the cats of Cyprus very well.
Because wherever we went in Cyprus, we encountered cats. Every cafe was a cat cafe. In Polis, a barmaid shooed a cat off a chair with a quick flap of a kitchen towel, the kind of mean gesture elementary school boys employ in the locker room after swimming lessons. The moment she turned her back, the cat jumped back on the chair and stretched itself out like a pasha. We found them in large numbers on the streets of Limassol – next to the mosque or near a feeding station. Many alley cats looked remarkably good – all shiny furs, round bellies and intact tails. Thanks to the cat ladies who emptied packs of Whiskas for them, and left treats everywhere.
Man-devouring snakes
But how did Cyprus become the island of cats? The close relationship between humans and animals goes back a long way here. At the Neolithic site of Shillourokambos, somewhere between Limassol and Larnaca, French archaeologists came across the grave of a man and his cat a few years ago. The find dates back to 7500 BC, at least 4,000 years before the domestication of cats in Egypt. “Examination showed that a small pit or grave had been deliberately dug out, and the body of the cat was placed in it, then rapidly covered”, the researchers said.
In the fourth century AD, the reputation of the cat in these parts of the Mediterranean was further cemented. Drought ravaged Cyprus, “forty days without rain”, according to a poem by local Nobel laureate George Seferis, “the whole island devastated, people died and snakes were born.” The peninsula of Akrotiri, nowadays amply named Cape of the Cats, was especially teeming with vipers. “This cape had millions of snakes thick as a man’s legs and full of poison.” If we are to believe Cypriot folklore, the snakes grew to gigantic proportions, large enough “to crush the bones of lambs and kids against trees before swallowing them.” The rampant plague of snakes prevented the monks from the local monastery of Saint Nicolas from entering their fields. They were close to despair.
Their lifesaver: Helena of Constantinople. Mother of Emperor Constantine and on her way home after finding the cross of Jesus in Palestine – aren’t we all, right? She made a stopover in Cyprus – where she wanted to gift the monastery a splinter of that cross. She found the monks in desperation. Always eager to help, Helena ordered two boat lands of cats to the island, a thousand flea balls in total, coming from Egypt and Palestine.
The monks immediately got to work. They trained the cat army and taught the quadrupeds to fight the snakes at the command of a bell. The cats risked life and limb, “some lame, some blind’, wrote Seferis, “others missing a nose, an ear, their hides in shreds.” Nevertheless, the cats managed to reduce the number of snakes. According to Colin Thubron’s excellent Journey to Cyprus, one chronicler raised the status of the creatures to “man-devouring, quadruped snakes, as long as horses and with almost-bullet proof skins; but even these the cats hunted, leaping on their backs and tearing out their eyes.”
Cat or dog?
Now the cats on the Cape lead a quieter life. The monastery is no longer populated by monks, but by nuns. When we passed by, it was closed for renovation. The cats present raised their heads lazily, chubby and sluggish from all the food left by visitors. I think they have earned their retirement. Their story is so charming that it doesn’t matter that it may be – at least partly – apocryphal. Or that it may count as one of the first recorded cases of invasive species dominating an island’s fauna.
Those familiar with Darwin’s theories know that evolution on islands sometimes takes on strange forms. In the mountains of the interior of Cyprus, feral populations of cats evolved into a new, local variety. They’ve grown bigger, to handle big prey – rats, lizards, snakes – and developed thick furs to withstand the heavy highland rains. According to experts, Cyprus cats also show a remarkable amount of affection, “almost dog-like behaviour towards owners.” On this island, you can be a dog and a cat person at the same time.
So many cats nowadays populate Cyprus that they’ve become a pest, like rats or pigeons. On this island, a manifest lack of funding for sterilisation programmes goes hand in hand with a religious population that does not see the point of such measures. That attitude has resulted in one and a half million cats – while Cyprus has only 1.2 million people. Other sources even quote two million cats.
Many of those stray cats are at the mercy of ‘cat moms’, compassionate old ladies who feed them and sometimes pick up the vet’s bill. Or from benefactors like our couchsurfer Nikiphoros who adopted a dumped kitten with a missing eye, Tessa. If you are travelling through Cyprus yourself, it is worth buying a pack of cat treats to hand out. Or a snake, that’s also possible.
This article first appeared in Dutch on Tom’s blog.
