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The Gentrified Cats of Istanbul
So there I was this morning, slurping up my daily “Jolt of Good News” from the Good News Network when I came across this tidbit and was catapulted (you’ll see what I did there in a moment) back several years in my Ricochet life.
Normally, I only get this sort of “pointless nostalgic” about the site on Dec. 10, of which the one this year will mark my 11th Ricoversary. But I’m getting older by the minute, and perhaps my threshold is lower than it used to be. In any event, on seeing a story about the residents of Istanbul improving the lives of thousands of stray cats with elaborate outdoor cat houses, I thought about my friend Claire.
Claire Berlinski.
She was one of the reasons to join Ricochet, back there at the dawn of the second decade of the 21st century. She was (and her profile indicates that she still is) an editor here. You haven’t lived until one of your posts has been edited by Claire, trust me. What emerges at the other end is often nearly unrecognizable, but generally, better. (Insert quibbles here; Lord knows, there are some.) Her own posts were erudite, informed, interesting, and about so much more than politics. Until, somehow, one day they weren’t. And things began to go sideways from there.
I’ll never be other than sorry about that, because I don’t believe that political differences, no matter how stark or how ugly, should be our sole identifier, and the sole enabler and arbiter of friendship. In my world, you stick up for your friends and for those who’ve done you no wrong — publicly, privately, and everything in between, even if you don’t always agree with them, or even if you find some of the positions they take on some things distasteful.
Because they’re your friends. Or at least they’re not hostiles.
By and large, that’s true on Ricochet. We stick up for each other. Even for those of us who espouse beliefs we loathe. When they’re ill or in trouble, we support them, and the reverse is also true (I know this from personal experience). When they need help, we’re there. And when we need help, they show up for us. I wish only that all of us, from top to bottom, understood this. But I’m afraid some don’t, and that some are afraid, no matter (or perhaps because of) their status here, to weigh in on matters humane and universal. I hope and pray that changes.
Lord knows, there’s even room here for a prodigal son or two. I expect you know who you are, and I’m happy to welcome you back as well.
But Claire. Istanbul. Paris. Cats. Ricochet.
I remember the morning I woke up — groggily — to hear my iPhone making a call and discovered that one of my cats (Fat Alice, of course) had — somehow — managed to knead my iPhone into submission with her paws, had got into Slack, and had dialed Claire’s phone number in Paris and was eagerly awaiting her picking up the phone, probably so she could complain about her treatment out here in Rural ‘Murica, and ask (nicely) for Claire to buy her a plane ticket to the City of Love.
The stories (not all happy ones) about a Ricochet member who babysat Claire’s Parisian cats for a while. Because that’s what we do. And what I might have done, had my own personal situation not been so fraught at the time.
And the posts:
Why I Love Turkey: “A few hours ago I got up to feed my cats. When I put out the food, to my puzzlement, only six cats showed up … ”
Catstantinople: “I think the world needs cheering up. I think it’s time to end the mystery and answer the question: How exactly did I wind up in Istanbul with seven cats … ”
Hallowe’en in Istanbul [Seasonally relevant, as well!]: “I want to indulge Peter, but I can’t rightly recall seeing a carved pumpkin in Istanbul. This is what they do to pumpkins, though: It’s called kabak tatlısı, and it’s delicious … ”
This Post Represents One of the Greatest Achievements in Human History: “Over the past 48 hours, I have moved my entire household — including seven cats and two turtles — from one neighborhood of Istanbul to another … ”
And then there are the posts (like mine today) in which mention of Turkish cats conjures up in the minds of others, like Turkish delight, thoughts of Claire, of which the following is only a small sample:
Catapalooza, or “Dr. Berlinski, please call home; your cats need to hear from you. Now.”: “Could this be the real reason Claire went to Istanbul (and why her cats wish she was still there) … ”
And:
What’s That, Claire? A Ricochet Meetup In The Park: I’m terribly sorry but, I’m uh, … I have to lick my fur that day … ”
Some of those posts written by members no longer here whom I knew, had met, and still miss. O tempora! O mores!
But, here we still are. And life goes on, not always as we will it, but always as it does.
Much as I enjoy the political fray both here and elsewhere (and I do enjoy it, although I don’t always strenuously engage), I’m really here for the community and the connection.
May it ever be so. And, in the spirit of which — I’m thinking — what we really need in this country is a project to “improve the lives of thousands of abandoned roosters with elaborate chicken coops.” Been there. Done that. Herewith, a couple of shots of my first effort in this regard. Isn’t it a beauty?
Here’s to Claire, and to everything and everyone who brought us here, and whoever and whatever keeps us here. I’m not bailing. Ricochet will have to sweep me out the door just before they turn out the lights. (Hope that doesn’t happen, BTW: neither the lights nor the sweeping. Just staking out my ground. And. Not. Budging.)
@claireberlinski
Published in General
In what was my first interaction with a Ricochet editor, she called me “a Turkish ultra-nationalist Islamist.” No, really!
I miss Claire too.
That is the most beautiful chicken coop I have ever seen.
Thanks. It was a delightful project, of which more anon. I started out determined to do it on the cheap (cheep?) but as I went on, it was turning out so well that I decided to spend a little more, culminating in the steel roofing that matches the house. Oh dear. Next up? A second little sheep shed. Perhaps I’ll need to find a second job to pay for that one….
My current tenants are from Turkey. They are fascinating and very genuinely wonderful people. One item they claim, is that 70% of the people are, one way or another, employees of the government. Reading some of the first comments of the poll you linked to, note that many of the questions relate to “Is the government too involved in… ”
Anyway, my immediate response to my Turkish friend was that the US Federal government was too big and too involved, and his response was that it was less than half of Turkish engagement, which since he was raised in the Turkish system thought it was superior. Interesting dichotomy.
Cat houses?
Claire also led me to Ricochet.
My first post was about Claire and it went Main Feed.
I had an IM exchange with @claire one time about sending pizzas to surprise @cbtoderakamamatoad for all the hard work She does, but We couldn’t figure out how We could get donations.
I miss Claire too. In her honour:
I follow her on Twitter, on the not-so-frequent occasions when we are both on Twitter.
Not long before the election we both wished each other sincerely and with good will that we would like the old-other person back. (I don’t remember the exact words.)
I follow her other gig, I just wish she was still writing and commenting on Ricochet as well – it’s a poorer place without her perspective.
The people of Constantinople/Istanbul have had a long positive relationship with cats, apparently.
Available free on Kanopy.com with your public library card.
That certainly raises the bar on chicken coops. We’ve known all along that the animals that hit the lottery by getting to live on @she ‘s farm are mighty spoiled. But to have such a dwelling is just magnificent. There are parts of the country where that would be the most solidly built human house in the area!
Maybe we should have you build our next house! No worries–we are never leaving this house! I remember Claire made a couple of lovely comments on posts of mine. I will always wonder how her views shifted and miss her, too,
I opened this because I learned in Istanbul that cats won’t eat bread, and there are tons of cats. They would stalk our morning breakfast on the veranda, but they were all about the meat and cheese. (Funny to not know, but I’m a dog girl.)
The article took a different twist!
Nice sentiments though.
It used to be all of us until at least until Tax Freedom Day. Now, given mask / vaccine / lockdown mandates it seems apparently all of us are, all the time.
Holy smoke there really is a Good News Network. I’ll have to book mark it.
I would not have guessed Istanbul is the one city cats are cherished. I would have guessed a city in England as the most cat friendly.
I used to like Claire too until she went off into NeverTrump derangement.
That is one heck of a chicken coop!
You keep mentioning wonderful offerings on Kanopy and I’m always upset that my library goes with Hoopla instead. Their listings rarely line up.
Thread?
Oh my gosh! I loved your story. Claire Berlinski was how I found Ricochet, as I’ve said before and my sentiments about her stories, writing and cats echo yours. I hope she is doing well. The world has changed so much. Yes I lost a good friend to the hostile political environment during the recent presidential election, we’d been friends since 1990. But I realized that she had become more what she’s always been – she evolved in her liberalism, negativity, extreme feminism, and rudeness. I overlooked so much of it, because I thought well, we have other things in common and I know she is basically a good person.
Politics poisoned many relationships and continues to do so. Claire’s politics also evolved and I feel like she had also become more of what she always was, a more liberal Democrat, leaning into mainstream, and maybe even an Independent, with one foot on one side and one on the other – which is fine. She was much more than her political views and we appreciated all her stories and all that she shared – I loved her books.
You mention that you wish those on Ricochet lurking on the fringes would come out and write or comment, and not be concerned of not fitting a narrative. I agree. All views and subject matter ok here and thank God!
Rudeness? But she’s always so civil.
Roger that. I might disagree with this person or that but I’d still want to sit down over a drink (my treat) (oh you had to order the MacAllen 12) and talk. Well, except for that one guy. He’s nuts.
No, even him.
I’ve lost a few friends over the years over politics, and it was always their decision. It was obvious that I regarded the inevitable outcome of their politics as ruinous as they regarded mine, but never thought to ask why is it that you cast me out, but I didn’t? Are we all so immensely blessed with innumerable friends we can wish a 30-year bond into the cornfield over this?
I suppose if you believe that your opinions confer some sort of empirically proven virtue, it’s easier.
This is the sweetest thing I’ve ever read. Thank you so much.
My Google ego-alert let me know, and when it did, I flinched ever-so-slightly. “Oh, no,” I thought. “Surely it will be someone complaining about me. Perhaps I ought not to read it.” This is not paranoia, by the way: Five times out of six when someone writes about me in a sufficiently public way to trigger the alert, it will be to complain of something I’ve written or said. Everyone’s a critic. I’m pretty thick-skinned about the public at large, but given the source of the alert, I thought, “But this will be my friends complaining,” and that does hurt. Except it wasn’t. This was a delight to read.
It made me so painfully aware of the passage of time, though. The Smudge, my little black cat—gone. Daisy, my cookie monster—gone. Mo, the massive fat one—gone. (His weight meant he was dancing with one foot in the grave for a very long time, to be sure. Even when he was a kitten, everyone asked if he was pregnant.) Toshiro, my concatenation of love—gone. The last vestiges of Turkish democracy—gone. No more do I have a cat for every holiday and special occasion.
But Suley (the one who jumped off my balcony and lived to tell the take) is still here, elderly and arthritic and infinitely touching in his old age. He can no longer jump off of much of anything, so when he wants to go up on the bed or the couch, he turns to me and squeaks–his squeaks are absurdly high-pitched compared to his big body and short legs–and I go over, lift him up gently, and set him in the comfy place of his choice. Then of course because he’s a cat, he changes his mind and wants to go down, so we do this in the other direction. And then the other. All day long. In the mornings, he comes over and squeaks by the chair where I work, so I lift him up and put him in my lap,where he’ll spend 20 solid minutes purring, manifestly glad that we’re both still alive.
Zeki is still here, too, a bit senile, but who cares, he’s a cat. It’s not like he needs to solve complex differential equations. He gets confused about where he is now and again and howls plaintively, but if I pet him, he calms right down. “If she’s petting me,” he figures, “I can’t be that lost.” So true. Sometimes he misses the litter box, but whatever—the floors clean pretty easily, and there’s nothing these animals can do wrong in my eyes.
Féline is still here, and never been happier. With every rival who dies, the more ecstatic she is. She’s having a glorious old age. She spends the whole day, all day, every day, purring and roaming the new territory she’s acquired by inheritance from her perished sisters and brothers. She purrs loudly. You can hear it from another room. She’s just delighted with the way things are working out. She licks her paws, then stand by the front door meowing to be let out (and in, and out, and in, and out, and … ) and she waits patiently for the news she’s been longing to hear ever since I brought six hateful kittens into her home: that they’re all dead. On that day–when she’s outwitted, outplayed, and outlasted the lot of them–she will be the happiest cat in the world.
And of course, I’m here, and so is my father, both in rude good health, so all is well. The pandemic has been terrifying–my father has almost every one of the dread risk factors–but he’s now vaccinated and boostered (and so am I), and life in France has returned much to normal. We’re grateful: So far, so good–although my brother caught Covid early on, unfortunately, and he’s still suffering from long Covid, which is no joke. Don’t get Covid.
The big news is that we’ll soon launch the Cosmopolitan Globalist. The website is still under construction, but I’ll let you know when it’s live. This is our editorial statement:
Some of you will love some of it and hate some of it, and others will hate some of it and love some of it, and that’s exactly what we intend. We’ve undertaken this project in reaction to the disappearance of serious foreign news coverage, first, but also to the growing polarization of electorates around the world–a polarization that’s resulted in democracies that are now separated into two siloed camps, each reading news media that conforms to their political preferences, each with their own set of facts. We think people should form their political preferences in response to the news, not vice-versa. If a story doesn’t confirm our readers’ biases, we’ll publish it anyway (so long as it’s true).
We mean to be relentlessly non-partisan. We’re just not interested anymore in the endless psychodrama of the American left-right divide. We’ve all come to the conclusion that it’s exhausting, terrible for democracy, and most important, manufactured. People are getting rich and powerful by fomenting and exacerbating our divisions, but those people aren’t us.
We grew tired of complaining about the media, so we decided to try to build something better. As soon as it’s ready, we’d love you to come, visit, and tell us if we’ve succeeded. (Don’t come now, because it’s not ready and I want you to see it when it’s perfect. But in about three weeks, visit Cosmopolitan Globalist dot com. No, don’t look now: It’s not ready. When it’s ready, I’ll come by and let you know.) We’ll know we did it right if you can’t quite figure out what our politics are, and suspect we may have some suspiciously pink people on board, but can’t quite find evidence of that and find it really interesting anyway–and especially if you say, “I had no idea any of this was happening. They never mention this on any other news site I read.”
(I’m not using the royal “we” by the way: The “we” is me, my co-editor and founder Vivek Kelkar, in Mumbai–whom I’ve known since my Asia Times days when he was our South Asia correspondent and I worked on the editorial desk–and about sixty journalists, analysts, and writers around the world who all feel that something is seriously wrong with Anglophone news coverage–and that the world would be a better place if news coverage of places beyond New York and Washington D.C. dramatically improved. We include the former President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves; Adam Garfinkle, formerly of the American Interest; Robert Zubrin– Ricochet’s Mars guy; and a host of hugely talented Americans who are otherwise unemployable in media because they’ve been cancelled. It’s given me special pleasure to scoop them up, along with their talent.)
We’ve also got people like our delightful web designer, Amanpreet, who lives in Chandigarh and never complains no matter what weird requirement we drop on him. We’ve got lots of people who aren’t professional journalists–which, as I’ve explained to them, is an asset, not a defect; I won’t have to untrain them. All we lack right now are investors. We’re hoping that once we unveil the site, it will sell itself. The need for such a product is so obvious that no one to whom I’ve described it–not one–has said, “But who would read that?” Everyone says, “I want to read that.”
So, if they’re telling the truth, we’re going to be a big success. And if not, at least we tried. I’ve learned a lot trying, too. This is the biggest thing I’ve ever tried to create. Bringing together a team like this and managing it (without a budget, because the only thing I have to offer our writers, for now, is hope and excitement) has been fascinating. Until now, I’ve always been an employee, or worked solo. I’ve never been the boss of a large group. I’ve never owned a company before. (We’re registered in Estonia, where we’ve become e-citizens. Go, friendly Estonian business environment!) Fortunately, Vivek has a lot more experience than I do of the business side of things, so he’s spared me from making many amateur mistakes.
It’s wildly complex, though, to build something new from scratch. I hardly need to tell this to anyone who’s done it. We’ve been sleepless for about three weeks trying to get the website to work properly and do exactly what we need it to do. That’s why no one has heard from me lately (on Twitter or anywhere else). We’re very close, though: Amanpreet solved a major technical problem for us yesterday, and now we’re so close to launching we can taste it. I just need to finish about ten more tasks, including figuring out how to migrate all our podcasts to the new site, and then–boom! We’ll see if the world is ready. Cross your fingers for us.
I’ll be back to tell you when it’s time to come over and give it a look-see.
Meanwhile, thank you so much, She, for a post that made my day, made me misty-eyed with nostalgia, and reminded me how fond I am of my old friends here.
You are all, always, welcome in my home in Paris.
Don’t tell Féline I said that.
xoxoxClaire
Dear Claire,
A delight to hear from you, and you’re most welcome. I loved, loved, loved hearing the cat update, and am glad you and your father are well. Hope your brother’s health continues to improve with time.
This made me laugh out loud:
I have so been there! Thanks to the kindness of strangers there’s a never-ending turnover of strays, abandoned, and feral creatures, and the occasional desperate plea from a friend or a friend-of-a-friend who’s trying to unload a creature who–for one reason or another–has to be rehomed. I’m down to two dogs now, both 150lbs or so, Great Pyrenees who both came as adults from elsewhere. Levi is eleven and Xena is 10–a great age for such large dogs. She seems to have doggie dementia which has addled her considerable wits, but done nothing to ameliorate her very stubborn, but (fortunately) loving disposition. (I suspect she’s largely deaf too, but it’s hard to know for certain, given the afore-mentioned stubbornness, which has always rendered her immune to listening and following instructions.) Levi’s all there mentally, but struggles to get to his feet. They’re both well otherwise, but I don’t know how much longer they’ll be here. My youngest cat Psymon is about five (the vet thinks). He marched into my house after a cold winter spent in the woods at the bottom of the field, in March of 2019 and never left. Smartest cat I’ve ever known. The other five are many years older, from about nineteen to about ten, and none of them has recovered from his eruption into their lives. I no longer look forward to that happy day, because I don’t think it’s ever going to eventuate. They are destined to snarl and growl, and he’s destined to tease and provoke, until it no longer matters. Still, I think underneath it all, they add spice and meaning to each others’ lives, and those that remain will miss the ongoing kerfuffles as things inevitably pan out. (But wait! There will be more! One of life’s incontrovertible truths…)
Thanks for the update on your projects. I wish you well and hope for success there. Please keep us posted.
Much love to you and yours, and a special hug for Féline.
She
PS: That Estonian thing is very interesting. I used to work for an Estonian, and have always had fond feelings towards the country as a result. He was a fine boss, very bright and competent, but absolutely nuts (in a good way).
This x1000.
I think FSC is talking about her friend since 1990 here, not Claire.
I was talking about my ex-friend, not Claire. My friend was always snarky and quick to pounce – and she grew in that “attribute” – Trump brought that out in many –
I still have a friend with whom politics is out-of-bounds. She is still driven to incandescent rage by the mere mention of the name of … George W. Bush. So, it’s strictly family, friends, and how the Bears are doing.
(She’s a White Sox fan too. My tolerance is without limit.)
We’re renting a house while we build, and our elderly timid cat has finally adjusted to the new digs (after 3 months). She’s here on the porch under the chair, but now the neighbor keeps popping up in different places. He talks – he literally say hullo – hullo – over and over and over. She’s like… oh no ! Not again! (she attracts the boys this time every year….)
AND.
This is why the Communists (the impolite but real name for the left) have been winning. We accept their terms rather then making them live, really live, with the consequences of their diktats.
Were each of us serious, we each would live by this:
And we would each say:
I got to see Lou Reed in Munich battling the crowd demanding the old hits as he performed the New York album/CD.
Claire led me to Ricochet as well.