In Evliya’s time, the only animals which were believed to have been admitted to paradise were these: Katmir, the dog of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, Jonah’s whale, Ishmael’s ram, Abraham’s calf, the Queen of Sheba’s ass, the ox of Moses and Mohammed’s camel. Tradition tells us that the heavenly gates have also opened for a bird, the cuckoo of Belkis, and for a single lucky insect, the ant of Solomon. We are surprised, at first, to learn that there is no sainted cat among the blessed creatures in the heavenly zoo. After all, if even the lowly ant, the monstrous whale and the dumb ox have gained entrance to heaven, then why not the cat, which is surely better suited than they are to enjoy paradisical pleasures. But then we realise that cats have already found an earthly paradise here in our town – just listen to them purring along the cobbled streets of Stamboul!

The cats of Stamboul are far more eastern in their ways than are the erect residents of the town. See them slinking down the streets, looking warily around them with hooded eyes, radar-ears pricking at the suspicion of an enemy’s tread, ready to spring into action should an illicit opportunity reveal itself, watchful always for the chance to rape or plunder, graceful in their stride and sleek in their dress, these criminal aristocrats of the alleyways, corrupt from their claw-scarred noses to their bitten-off tails, oriental from the glittering agate eyes in their Egyptian heads down to their lethal, cobble-wise claws.

Observe these eastern cats quarrelling over entrails and fish-heads beneath the stalls in the fish-market, where their ancestors have fought and dined for centuries. See them poised on the drainpipes and ledges in the Passage of Flowers, waiting to pounce on a fat and unwary, waddling rat. Notice them couchant and contemplative on the sun-warmed cobbles in the afternoon, tawny sphinxes waiting for a handout. Later, watch them as they awake and stretch themselves languorously, and then head for dark and odorous alleys in search of food and sex, serenading us through the night with cries of love and battle. These wise cats know the cobbled streets of Stamboul better than do we, for they are closer to them.

Even in the poorest parts of Stamboul the street-cats are often as fat and sleek as pashas. This is usually due to the bounty of some local cat-lover, many of whom do not look too well-fed themselves. One of the best-known of these is a quaint character in our own neighbourhood known as Kedi Dede, the Grandfather of Cats. He is an ancient Armenian gentleman with a long white, tobacco-stained beard, long white hair which hangs down over his shoulders, and the solemn face of a broken-down prophet. His only garment is a threadbare wreck of an overcoat which trails behind him in a ragged train, and he is shod in whatever fragmentary wrecks of shoes he finds abandoned on the cobbles. He is also known as Afaroz, or the Excommunicate, from the fact that he was many years ago excommunicated from the Armenian Gregorian Church. No one now living remembers what brought about his excommunication, but, whatever it was, he is still a total outcast from the Armenian community and, for that matter, from all other communities. But, although an outcast, his dignity and simple kindness have made him one of the best-loved figures in town; in fact the ordinary people of Stamboul believe this excommunicate to be a saint. Wherever he goes he is surrounded by cats, for he is their principal benefactor in town. I sometimes see him in the Passage of Flowers or in the fish-market beside the Galata Bridge, searching for scraps with which to feed his dependent cats. He must spare very little for himself, for he is but a frail shadow of a man. Up until a few years ago he lived with his cats in the basement of a Greek church in the village of Bebek. But eventually his family of cats grew so large that it began to interfere with the normal functioning of the church. The village priest then told the old man that either he or his cats would have to go. And so, one day, we saw Kedi Dede walking sadly down the Bosphorus road from Bebek to Rumeli Hisar, surrounded by his displaced cats, looking for a new home for them and for himself. They lived for a while in a ruined, roofless mosque near the seashore; but soon Kedi Dede’s health began to fail and he seemed barely able to drag himself along, supporting himself with a splintered tree-branch. Finally he disappeared from sight altogether and no one saw him for several months. We all remarked that the cats in our village seemed thinner and more neglected since his departure. Then one day I met him again in a crowded public-taxi returning from town. In my broken Turkish I asked him where he had been all that time and about the state of his health. To my great surprise he answered in perfect English and told me that he had been in the hospital with pneumonia. He was now fully recovered, he reassured me, and was looking forward to his homecoming. Then he asked me about myself, saying that he had often seen me wandering down the back streets of Stamboul and always wondered who I was. I told him that I was a teacher in the American College in Bebek. He smiled and said, ‘Ah yes, the American College; I graduated from there myself fifty years ago. It is an excellent place of which I have many happy memories.’ For the remainder of the taxi-ride we talked about the fascinating political manoeuvrings then taking place in the synods of the Armenian Gregorian Church and other such matters. When the taxi finally stopped in Rumeli Hisar, I was not at all surprised to see a large crowd of mewing cats waiting for my sainted companion. Such is the earthly paradise enjoyed by the cats of Stamboul.

And as the cats are the street-aristocrats of Stamboul, so are the dogs its wretched rabble. Mean and mangy, sick and covered with pus-filled sores, raw bones protruding through matted fur, they limp along the cobbles like hordes of medieval lepers doomed to walk for ever on all fours, crookedly. They swarm in the streets of the slums, snarling fiercely but too bootwise cowardly to risk attack. They prowl the filthy gutters, probing with their noses along the cobbles, looking for a decayed scrap or a half-gnawed bone; but to no avail, for the quicker, smarter cats have already gleaned the street and now sit in doorways smirking cynically. Occasionally a young pup will attempt to dispute with an old tom over the proprietary rights to a stinking mound of garbage. The penalty for this folly is a lacerated snout, and the educated pup returns to his starving pack, his tail between his legs and his head hung down in the immemorial hangdog attitude. And so the dogs of Stamboul can only complain and they din the nights with their howling, yowling, yipping, yelping, barking and baying, disturbing sleepless Stamboullus and dissipating the small store of good will they still possess in town. Occasionally the citizens of Stamboul lose their patience altogether and round up the packs of wild dogs which infest their streets. This happens only once or twice a century, for Stamboullus are very patient and slow to anger. Even then they do not execute the dogs, for our citizens exhibit a truly legendary kindness towards animals. Instead, the dogs are exiled to Sivriada, a tiny, barren island in the Marmara, and allowed to starve to death there. The last such canine roundup occurred in the year 1908. There are still a few ancients who will tell you of the terrible yowling that sounded across the Marmara for several nights before the last ravenous dogs tore each other apart and the echoes of the last whines died out. Stamboul slept soundly then for a few months, but eventually a few faint yips began to be heard as pet puppies emerged from hiding and in a few years the town had once again its normal canine population – ten barks for every pair of human ears.

My own dog, Lobo, who has been licking my feet while I write these lines, has just perked up his ears. What has alarmed him? It cannot be a burglar, for Lobo is quite fond of thieves and never troubles them at their work. He is enraged only by postmen and delivery boys, and there are none of them about at this late hour. No, I can hear now what troubles Lobo – it is the dog-pack in the village of Rumeli Hisar responding to their Asian cousins across the straits in Anadolu Hisar. The evening call to prayer has just finished echoing across the Bosphorus, the faithful are preparing to take to their beds, and the dogs of Europe and Asia are assembling their nocturnal choirs to serenade them.

But despite their occasional impatience with street-dogs, Turks are generally fond of animals and treat them better than is the case in some more prosperous countries. Observe the rough crowd outside the mosque in Rumeli Hisar trying to help a stricken old horse to his feet after he has fallen before his wagon, and then, failing, patting the poor dead nag and comforting his weeping owner. Walk through the sordid slums in the hills above the Golden Horn and see a group of ragged boys sadly burying their pet dog in a flower-covered grave. And if you are upset by the sight of those two Gypsies beating that old donkey, just notice the clouds of dust emanating from his worn hide. Why, they are not beating him at all, you eventually decide, but just giving him a thorough dusting! Although children and animals are often neglected in Stamboul, they are nevertheless treated with affection – another of those curious contradictions in which this town abounds.

Nowhere is this affectionate neglect of animals more apparent than in the Istanbul zoo. The zoo is located in a corner of Gülhane, the Park of the Rose House, which lies just under the walls of the Old Seraglio. This is probably the oldest zoo in Europe, for the Ottoman sultans kept a menagerie here as far back as the time of Mehmet the Conqueror, as did the Byzantine emperors before them. The Istanbul zoo, unfortunately, has fallen on bad times since the transfer of the capital to Ankara, and there is little money available for the purchase of new animals or even for the care of the old ones whose ill-fortune it is to be caged-up there. These animals, incidentally, include types not usually seen in Western zoos, such as, for example, the common barnyard pig, an object of particular fascination in a Moslem country. When we look upon the filthy, degenerate-looking sows in the Istanbul zoo we can agree with the dictate of the Prophet, who declared these porcine slobs unclean and therefore unfit to eat. And so the pigs in the Istanbul zoo provide both entertainment and an illustration of the wisdom of religious dietary laws for those peasants who look upon them with fascination and disgust.

It is no wonder, then, that the animals, birds and reptiles in the Istanbul zoo are in such a sad state, thin and dispirited, dull of eye and worn and drab of pelt, scales and feathers, their pens and cages filled with reeking mountains of dung and droppings. Only the monkeys seem to have retained their high spirits, and still amuse the crowds on Sunday with their comic acrobatics and shock them with their bawdy mannerisms. Nevertheless, the animals are treated kindly by their keepers, who look none too well taken care of themselves. The animals are not given the usual names by which they are known in Western zoos, but their keepers here call them by familiar Turkish nicknames. If you think it strange that a bear should be called arslan, or lion, it is just that this sobriquet is applied to brave and strong young men by their affectionate friends, and so it is that the brave and strong young bear is called a lion by his affectionate keeper. ‘Come, my lion,’ he says as he brings the bear his dinner, but the bear, seeing the poor fare before him, looks as if he would rather eat his keeper. For all of the animals in the Istanbul zoo, whatever may have been their exotic diet in their native habitat, are fed solely on stale, ground-up simit, a kind of pretzel. Now there are moments when I myself enjoy nothing better than a fresh, crisp simit, but the thought of a steady diet of simit, and stale, ground-up ones at that, would make me want to eat my keeper, especially if I had the appetite of a brave and strong, lion-like bear.

And if I had the appetite of an elephant my rage would be truly mammoth when presented with a lunch more suitable for an anaemic mouse. My son and I were strolling through the Istanbul zoo one day, when we heard the elephant trumpeting in rage and saw him rocking his cage as if determined to break it to pieces. His poor keeper was distressed almost to the point of tears and kept approaching his enormous pet with a bucket of ground-up simit, trying to get him to eat. ‘My son, my son,’ he cried, despairingly, ‘why will you not eat your dinner? You must eat or you will become ill. My son, my son, please eat!’ I approached the keeper and suggested to him that the elephant might not care for stale, ground-up simit. The keeper agreed, saying that he could readily understand this, but he was only following the director’s orders. I reported this situation to a zoologist friend of mine, who thereupon went to see the director of the zoo to find out if anything could be done for the starving elephant. The director was very interested and sympathetic and explained that he himself had only recently been appointed to this position and as yet knew very little about animals. He would be very grateful, he said, if he could be advised as to the proper diet for the animals, particularly the elephant, since he was the principal attraction in the zoo. ‘Tell me, sir,’ said the director, holding his pad and pencil ready, ‘what do elephants eat?’

And so it came about that the starving elephant in the Istanbul zoo was restored to a proper diet and now no longer trumpets in rage and rocks his cage at mealtime. Now his keeper smiles happily while he watches his huge pet devouring enough food at one sitting to keep him and his own hungry family well-fed for weeks. ‘My son, my son,’ says the keeper to his elephant, ‘you will soon look like a lion once again!’

And since then, whenever I feel famished between meals, I always think of the Istanbul zoo and reflect upon the hunger of elephants.