Rulers of the Streets

The many cats of Jeddah. 🐈 Slinking behind bushes, brazenly splayed out on car roofs, balancing on dumpster edges…cats run the streets here. Most are pretty mangy and hardened by their rough existence – not exactly the fluffy, friendly type. But luckily for them, people are happy to give the felines scraps of food or little piles of cat food as you can see in the pic, contributing to their multiplication. 😬
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In Islam, Prophet Muhammad is known to have loved cats and prohibited their mistreatment or killing. This mentality has permeated the culture as people seek to emulate Muhammad in all his ways of life. Thus, the cats are often fed and people don’t seem to mind them prowling about. Cats are also viewed as “clean,” so they are esteemed much higher than other animals (i.e. dogs) bc of Islam’s emphasis on cleanliness and purity. There are many less stray dogs around the city and I’ve only seen a handful of pet dogs in my couple years here. I was told that, traditionally, if families had dogs here, they were kept outside and used as guard dogs, not as cherished family pets.
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Now I understand why many of my Saudi students in the US were frightened of dogs… I can never erase the image of our 12 pound miniature poodle chasing a 20 year old man around our front yard (he had wriggled out of my arms and I didn’t realize my student was genuinely afraid until I caught a glimpse of his face). And my other poor student who arrived in the JFK airport (first day in the US) and had to spend time with security bc he had a gut reaction to kick the police dog when it walked by sniffing his bag. He didn’t know why a menacing dog was approaching and he went into defense mode. 🙈
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Slowly, more Saudis have been warming up to the idea of pet dogs and we’ll occasionally see one out on a walk. There are also some organizations, like Open Paws, that are seeking to change the stigma around dogs in the kingdom and they rescue abandoned dogs, rehabilitate, and rehome them.
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I’m not much of a pet person and I feel like the cats are just waiting for me to stare at them the wrong way so they can pounce, but I’m glad Ezra gets a kick out of shouting, “kee-cat!” every 2 minutes on our walks.