January 08, 2004
We'll Always Have Yossarian
I borrowed an old copy of the Greece Lonely Planet guide from Debbie, one of the other two volunteers in town. At first I thought the cover was just a cute design, it featured a white cat in the upper left corner, sitting on a shelf. The rest of the shot was of a deep blue wall. Nice picture, I thought, but is that really Greece? I mean, it's a cat.
Turns out that, as in Bulgaria, strays are a part of Greece. Tourists seem to expect them and the locals actively take care of them. There are far more stray cats in Athens than there are dogs, and the pattern seemed to reverse itself on Crete, with packs of dogs running around. But before I get to the stories, let me just say this to any Eastern Europeans who might be reading this, hoping for advice of some sort. Strays do nothing to aestheticize a country or a community. It's not romantic to have packs of stray dogs running around and, at times, it's scary. I say this because some students have mentioned that the strays are part of Bulgaria's "nature," and that getting rid of them would detract from the scenery. If Eastern Europe is holding back on proper animal control programs because it thinks that 3 legged bags of ribs hopping around biting shins are cute, then it needs to take another look at its policies.
That said, the Greek strays are, for the most part, at least healthy-looking. This led Jeff to trust a dog enough to pet it and name it Yossarian. As it happened, this caused Yossarian to take a liking to Jeff. His home (the dog's) seems to be the area around the Acropolis, and as we were exploring the hill, the dog kept following us. We couldn't shake him. He would walk a hundred feet ahead, a hundred feet back, then check on us to make sure we were okay. It was funny, almost cute. But then Yossarian got an over-developed sense of protection. At the top of the hill, in front of the gates of the Acropolis, Yossarian decided that another group of tourists had unfriendly intentions toward his Americans. He growled, barked, and nearly attacked them before he ran back to us and pissed on a nearby tree. The people he had nearly attacked glared at us as if Yossarian were ours.
The fun ended there. We did what we wanted to do at the top of the hill (the Acropolis was closed that day) and at one point left Jeff behind to babysit his hellhound while we went to an area dense with tourists. When we got to the bottom of the hill with Yossarian still tagging along, we decided to take action. We first tried to trap him behind a fence, but that failed when he cleverly found another open gate. Then we tried to ditch him in an alley by running around several corners in a row while he was busy with someone far behind us. He found that game all kinds of fun and charged after us.
Finally another stray, this time a cat, did him in. The cat was sitting behind a fence, inside one of the many archeological sites, and Yossarian wouldn't leave him alone. He barked, ran back and forth along the fence, and decided the cat was the enemy of his four new friends. We walked carefully away and escaped in a restaurant to eat lunch.
Two days later, when we had come back to actually see the Acropolis, we saw Yossarian in the courtyard where he had almost attacked the group of tourists. We very carefully walked around him, and he never suspected a thing. No doubt he had already found another group of Americans to stalk. There were thousands of them up on the hill that day.
Later on in our sightseeing, we discovered that the park near Hadrian's Arch might as well be a zoo for strays. At least ten puppies played in the park (which was closed the day we visited) along with their parents, and a small kitten bounced around trying to act at home.
Shortly after we arrived, a woman came by with a giant bag of food and the dogs ran over to the fence expectantly. The puppies all ate their fill and the bigger dogs ate last, which seemed like a noble feeding order for strays. The cat got what it could and did well.
The point, if i have one, is this: The strays were a part of our trip, they accented certain things, but we could have had just as fun a time without them. You know, I think we would have had even more fun without the guilt and pity. They've given us anecdotes, sure, and some of the memories make me chuckle. But I'd rather see the animals in homes or a shelter. Their scabs, broken legs, and unkempt hair reminded me at every turn that cats and dogs aren't meant to be left to the wilds of urban society, no matter how much food tourists leave them under the table.
Posted by Rob at January 8, 2004 04:30 PM