God, what a beautiful feeling lightness is. And how quickly it disappears. Almost as quickly as our attention spans for reels these days. Everything can change within seconds.
Suddenly, I find myself split between joy and sadness. Between past traumas and future emergency strategies. And no, it’s not the perfect body of some influencer throwing my nervous system into chaos this time. It’s a ridiculously cute video about cats. Cats in Istanbul. Cat love in Istanbul. About how much we Istanbul locals supposedly love cats.
And you know what?
It’s time to talk about why I’ve developed a very complicated relationship with these videos.
Because don’t get me wrong: I love them too. I love that people from all over the world come to Istanbul and notice that this city has something special when it comes to street animals.
Cats here don’t simply “exist.” They are part of daily life. They sleep inside cafés, sit in boutique windows, walk through restaurants as if they’re paying rent, and sometimes I genuinely feel like Istanbul’s cats emotionally belong to this city more than we humans do.
The funny thing is: while writing this article, I’ve already pet two cats and jumped up twice because two male cats started fighting on my terrace. Okay, I actually had to stop writing and check. It was my fifteen-year-old cat trying to chase away a younger one from his territory. Honestly, I thought I raised him better than that, but apparently he woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.
While tourists watch these cute Instagram videos thinking, “How beautiful, how loving this city is,” I see something completely different at the exact same time.
I see fleas. Inflamed eyes. Runny noses. I see FIP. I see coronaviruses. I see emergency carriers.
I see people unable to sleep because somewhere another kitten disappeared overnight. I see tiny bodies underneath cars. I see babies born inside car engines because their mother was simply trying to find a warm place to survive.
I see all the things that were never included in that cute little video. And at some point, I stopped being able to see only the beautiful side of it.
And the craziest part is: eventually, you develop an entirely damaged nervous system for these things.
While other people walk through Istanbul admiring boutique displays, I might be casually walking through Moda with an iced coffee and suddenly do a full 180-degree turn in the middle of the street. The people around me get startled and I probably look like a deeply confused deer because somewhere, very far away, my ear picked up the sound of a kitten crying. Not even consciously.
At some point, you start analyzing every sound. You walk past parked cars and instinctively look underneath them. You hear garbage containers differently. You hear the city differently. Eventually, your brain stays permanently wired for emergency mode.
And of course, those beautiful Instagram videos never show any of this.
They don’t show the woman doing her feeding route before work every morning. They don’t show the elderly lady who sold furniture from her own apartment just to cover veterinary bills. They don’t show the people who have been emotionally beyond their limits for years and still continue because they simply can’t look away anymore.
And the craziest part? Most of these people are not doing well themselves. These are not wealthy animal welfare organizations with giant sponsors behind them. These are ordinary people with ordinary jobs and completely abnormal emotional burdens. People who go to work during the day and spend their nights trapping cats for neutering because otherwise more kittens will be born into impossible situations.
But of course, Istanbul wouldn’t be Istanbul if emotions ever stayed at “a little sad.”
No. This city intensifies everything.
Including animal love.
Everyone knows that person. The woman who is supposedly “a little crazy,” at least according to some neighbors. The man collecting injured animals in the morning. The person posting emergency donation requests on Instagram at three in the morning because a surgery suddenly costs a thousand euros and the cat still might not survive.
And these people are the reason this entire romanticized image of Istanbul even exists.
Most people have no idea how much organization happens quietly in the background. Volunteers collect street animals at night, bring them to temporary holding areas, transport dozens of cats to municipal veterinarians in the morning, pick them up after surgery, help them recover and return them safely to their neighborhoods. This entire infrastructure only exists because ordinary people decided they could no longer ignore suffering.
If you see a cat in Istanbul with a small cut on its ear, it usually means somebody fought for that animal. Somebody trapped it, transported it, waited, paid, organized.
And somehow, the grief never really ends.
Once, I rescued seven kittens from inside a generator. Seven. The entire day turned into panic, transport boxes, phone calls and that completely absurd adrenaline state you develop when you’re trying to hold tiny lives together.
Not all of them survived.
And somehow nobody ever talks about the grief afterwards.
About that quiet, chronic sadness that slowly spreads over your life like humidity. Because something is always happening. Another emergency always comes in. Another tiny creature is fighting for survival somewhere and eventually your brain forgets how to fully relax.
Maybe all of this sounds incredibly dark right now. And maybe it is, a little bit. But please don’t misunderstand me: this is not supposed to be an “Istanbul is horrible” article. Quite the opposite, actually.
Because I genuinely believe that this completely insane, emotional, sometimes self-destructive level of dedication also says something deeply beautiful about this city.
Every single day.
And maybe that’s exactly the part of these videos that I sometimes cannot stand.
Not the cats. Not the tourists.
But this sense of lightness, as if all of this somehow magically exists on its own. As if these animals are simply wandering happily through Istanbul because the world here is naturally warm and loving.
No.
This image of Istanbul only exists because countless exhausted people fight for it every single day. For free. Voluntarily. Emotionally far beyond their limits.
And that’s exactly why these Instagram reels make me both happy and sad at the same time. Because they show the truth — just not the whole truth.
And before this article becomes too depressing: no, I do not want anybody to feel guilty. Quite the opposite. The fact that tourists love these animals, feed them and care about them means more than you can imagine. I genuinely love seeing it.
But if you ask me what you can do as a visitor, the answer is actually very simple: don’t just help the cats. Help the people behind the cats.
Feed them, love them, pet them — the cats, obviously. But if you truly want to give something back to this city, donate directly to local rescuers. Ask your nearest veterinarian who constantly brings in street animals. Every vet knows these people. Literally every single one. Leave your number. Ask if you can help. Even if it’s just five euros or a bag of cat food.
You have no idea how emotionally meaningful it can be when these people no longer feel completely alone with all of this, even just for a moment.
Not only financially.
Emotionally.
And before I start crying myself, I should probably end this article now. I have to be at the vet at noon. Kiko’s antibiotics appointment is waiting. He was close to dying when he dragged himself onto my terrace with what looked like his last bit of strength, but now he’s doing incredibly well. He jumps around, eats like a maniac and purrs constantly. His eyes healed, the coughing stopped and his nose is finally dry again.
So please keep your fingers crossed for Kiko that today was his last vet visit.
Well.
At least until his neutering appointment, obviously.
Elanur Dinc is the founder of Istanbul Muse, former agency owner and writer, originally raised in Germany and living in Istanbul for over six years. What started as a temporary move for a project slowly turned into a deep emotional connection with the city. Somewhere between chaos, stray cats and emotional overstimulation, she accidentally became a little bit of an Istanbul muse herself. She came to Istanbul for work — and stayed for the cats. Through personal essays and urban observations, she writes about the beauty, contradictions and emotional intensity of everyday life in Istanbul.
