Cyprus is an island of friendly people, tasty food, and abundant beauty. It is also an island covered in cats. As I have been roaming about Larnaca, I have seen many cats running around. They vary greatly, from how friendly they are to their coloration and how healthy they look. When I sit down at a restaurant outside, a cat will often appear. Sometimes, they cry at you and beg for food and pets. Other times they wait off to the side hoping for you to drop something. At many restaurants, it seems like the restaurant has one or two resident cats. Many of the restaurants on the boardwalk have outside seating, and I often spot the same cat strolling around the same restaurant. While at Hobo’s, a steakhouse on the boardwalk, I was eating dinner while two cats were taking turns begging for food. I did not mind at all and I was giving them small pieces of chicken. One of the waitresses shooed the cats away and, when she thought I was not looking, pet the cats and gave them scratches. This is one of the first interactions I saw between the locals and the cats.

            It can be easy to miss, but if you look carefully as you walk the streets of Larnaca, you will see many stores that put out food and water for the cats. It also seems that, like the restaurants, many shops have a few local cats that are fed by the store owner. The other really interesting thing about the cats is that, for feral street cats, most of them look very healthy. There are definitely a few that look the worse for wear, but many of the cats look healthy and taken care of. It definitely seems like there is a relationship between the people of Cyprus and the cats.

            My favorite cat story has to be when I visited the stationery store. There is a little office goods and stationery store close to my apartment that I visited a week ago. As soon as I walk in, I see a long black and white cat sleeping on a table of books and a very chunky grey and white cat sleeping on the floor. I immediately ask the store owners if I can pet them and they say yes and tell me that the one laying on the books’ name is Charlie. I chat with the store owners for a while and come to find out that both cats were street cats that followed the owners around town until the owners made them store cats. As I was petting Charlie and speaking to the owners, I asked them about the cats of Cyprus. They told me a legend around Helena of Constantinople and the cats. The legend is that in the time period of early 300 A.D., Helen had shipped hundreds of cats to Cyprus to help control the population of venomous snakes at a monastery on Cyprus. Over time the cats got rid of the snakes and bred to lead to the massive population of cats in Cyprus. Is it really Helena who is responsible for Cyprus having so many cats? Probably not. But it is clear that the Cypriots have embraced the cats and they are a fundamental part of the Cyprus experience.

Madi Barber