A personal account of one reporter's interest piqued on the huge populations of cats among the Roman ruins:
"When Egypt became part of the Roman Empire, the cult of cat-headed goddess Bastet crossed the Mediterranean. Its worship became so popular, overshadowing the reverence of the emperor, that eventually an imperial decree banned all cats. But some survived. The idea that a few of the descendants still live within the imperial ruins aroused my curiosity. Thus I ended up at the largest cat colony in Rome, the Torre Argentina cat sanctuary..."
Pictured above is a cat known as "Nelson the One-Eyed King" - an alpha cat among the ruins. Feral cats are well-known in many cities worldwide and feral dogs are now being considered a problem of crisis proportion in the US. Thinking on the intimately interwined live of dogs and people in the city brings to mind the movie Amores Perros and the realization that perhaps any urban narrative that is true to the city should include the dogs, birds, cats or,rats that populate and insinuate metropolitan life(?)
AY
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