Cats . . . and the Mysteries of Life

The proliferation of stray cats in the alleyways of Rabat and Marrakech was both bewildering and fascinating. How do they survive? Where do they come from, and where do they go?

Some were beautiful, some were downright mangy, some were pregnant with more cats.

Perhaps an explanation came, via a New York Times story that appeared just after I returned from the cat-featuring trip depicted in these photos. In an article headlined ‘Poetry Gleaned From Darkness And Lots of Fur,’ Times reporter Mike Ives tells of a nocturnal visit with award-winning South Korean poet Hwang In-suk as she made the rounds of her neighborhood, Haebangchon, or Liberation Village, near Seoul’s central train station. The cats she has been feeding after dark for many years are also her muses. “I’ve found worlds that I wouldn’t have found . . .”

In the chaotic decades following the end of Korea’s brutal war, Haebangchon was known as a “moon village,” a term used for urban slums built on hillsides, Ives writes. The alleyways of Haebangchon seem very like those of Marrakech. Ms. Hwang’s poems are reflective of what she sees as Seoul as a place where “the rich and poor live in separate worlds.” They could also easily be references to the medinas — ancient central city communities of Morocco. And Hwang’s stray friends are surely kin to their feline relatives a continent or so away.

Ms. Hwang, explains reporter Ives, “is perhaps best known for poems that make wistful, whimsical observations about cats, and the humans who struggle to understand them.” She collects these observations on nightly feeding rounds where the cats approach her as a familiar, with affectionate rubs, or some with unrelenting skepticism.

It was thus with the cats I encountered regularly while going to and from the renovated and well-appointed hotel (Rabat) or upscale bed & breakfast (Marrakech) nestled in the alleyways with neighboring souks and ancient residences. Feeding stations everywhere suggested that locals — poets or not — were providing regular sustenance. In any event, the cats were at home; I was the interloper.

In all probability there are cat friends — poets or not — in alleyways everywhere who might inspire a poem of Ms. Hwang’s, “Ran, My Former Cat” quoted in the Times article. A brief excerpt:

I didn’t know where you came from

Always all of a sudden

you appeared

at a time when nobody was around

at a time when time belonged to nobody,

hanging about the roof of a rented house

as if from inside my heart,

as if from the edge of the moon

with a small half-cry,

you appeared.