Oops, this is my mom’s cat. World, meet Oreo. She lives in New Orleans and has never been to Marrakech.
I’ve loved cats since my mom let me pick out the cutest bundle of fur to be my new best friend at the ripe old age of seven. We had just moved from Toronto to Calgary. I was painfully shy, hated my new school and particularly my new 3rd grade teacher, and missed my friends from home. Tabbey was a fluffy orange tabby cat who grew up to be about the size of a small dog. He liked sleeping in my bed – preferably on my face, so I’d wake up with a mouthful of fur right around his preferred breakfast time. He also liked lying in the sun in our backyard patio, carefully watching the birds chirping in the nearby trees. A year after we moved to Florida, in 8th grade, I came home to find my neighbor sobbing. A speeding driver had hit Tabby as he crossed the street in our ordinarily sleepy and safe neighborhood to get from my neighbor’s garden to our front door, where he waited for me to come home from school. We waited another ten years to get a cat (Coco first, then Oreo) and I still have a soft spot for big orange tabbys. Long story short: I love cats. So of course, I had to take a picture of every adorable, beautiful stray cat in Marrakech.
Yes, this cat is cooler than all of us.
When we came back, I did a bit of digging. According to Follow Me Far Away, there’s a legend that Muhammad – the prophet of Allah, in Islam – surrounded himself with cats and had a particular favorite, to whom he eventually granted nine lives.
Whether that legend is true or not, there were cats everywhere in the city! An orange tabby and a pair of grey tabbys helped guide our way through the winding back streets of the Medina to our Airbnb. There were cats in all the parks – even cats who made their home in the Saadian tombs.
On Wednesdays, we nap on tombstones.
Most of the them were well-fed, although a few looked a bit mangier and sick. We even encountered this mama cat and her kittens – she had recently given birth and they alternated between play wrestling and nursing.
This little cutie was particularly bold, and sauntered right into our restaurant mewing for table scraps. It’s hard to concentrate on your roti when you have this furry face staring up at you!
Can I have some roti, pretty please?
If you love cats and need a book to read for your next plane ride, try The Lion in the Living Room by Abigail Tucker! It’s a breezy, part biological and part anthropological look at how cats became domesticated – or, more accurately, wandered into our homes and started bossing us around.
The Traveling Doughnut 