excess

tea and kitties.

sounds cute, doesn't it?

except for the fact that a) my bladder control is horrid and b) i can't stand/am mildly allergic to cats.

now, i love a warm cup of tea. i really do. but turkish people drink every chance they get. and it was hard to pass on a humble offer of turkish tea because sometimes i found myself alone in some lady's cave home who was trying to sell me overpriced crafts, and if i was going to give her money for something, she would have to settle for a small "donation" for the drink. or in a rug repair studio where it just wasn't cordial to say no if nobody else was there to buffer it with a yes. so i was really polite and just stayed relatively dehydrated besides the tea. (i know, rachel, i know) but because we were always doing something and who knew when i would be able to find the next bathroom, not to mention taking into account each trip to the squatter cost upwards of fifty cents, i had to do what was best at the time.

and then! i have never seen so many cats loose on the streets as in istanbul. i mean, they were everywhere. and i was always thinking, ugh. disgusting. can't they get these things neutered or something? but i guess they don't believe in making those sorts of life-altering decisions for animals, so they just let them run completely rampant around the city, letting them sleep and crawl where and when they please.

it surely would have been paradise for my cat-obsessed friends, and ironically, it made me really happy to imagine that if you all were there, in the midst of my eyes rolling you would have lovingly been ooohing and aaahhing and thinking they were oh. so. adorable.