Van Cats Victorious
Friday, 26 April 2024 08:20
Great news from Turkey!
The Van cat population is surging. Van cats are a naturally occuring breed from the Van Province in eastern Turkey. It’s home to Lake Van, the largest lake in the country.
Van cats are utterly gorgeous:they have white fur coats (with the faint dark markings on the head), blue or amber eyes, sometimes one of each, bushy tails – and they love swimming. They are often called the Swimming Cats and they do have a magnificent lake to swim in. Three decades ago, the breed was on the brink of extinction but now, thanks to the sterling work of Van Cat Research and Application Center at Van Yuzinci Yil University, numbers are on the rise. Almost twice as many kittens were born this year as last year. Actually I don’t think there could ever be too many of these handsome creatures, so let’s hope the increase continues.
There is a very persuasive local legend that Van cats are the descendants of the cats Noah took on the ark. It would explain the swimming. And as you know, when the flood waters receded, the ark was left perched on Mt Ararat, the tallest mountain in Turkey, part of the Armenian Highlands, and only 321km /200 miles northeast of Lake Van. All right, no cats are actually mentioned in the Bible, unless you count the lions who shared their den with Daniel, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there.
It is particularly appropriate that this good news was announced around the time we celebrate St George’s day (23 April). Despite some English people seeming to think that George was a white British male, he was Turkish. He was born in Cappadocia, which is now part of Turkey, to a Greek father and a mother from Syria Palestine – the part that is now Israel. The family moved to Rome, where George signed up for the military, serving in the elite Praetorian Guard.
After his martyrdom in AD 303 ,he became an extremely popular and busy saint and is venerated all over the Middle East, lots of Europe, and beyond. He is the patron saint of Georgia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Greece, Serbia, Bosnia. Montenegro, Malta, England, Portugal, and parts of Spain, Brazi and Kerala, looks after an impressive number of cities, including Moscow, Istanbul, Genoa and Venice, and is the dedicatee of too many churches to mention. I have probably left some places out, but you get the picture.
There seems no direct connection to cats, but George must have been a cat man. I am sure he was fond of them - all the Roman military were, they kept the rats and mice out of the garrison food stores - it’s just that he was too busy to mention it.