Anyone who spends time in Istanbul notices the same thing. Before the history, before the Bosphorus, before the skyline, there are the cats. They move through the city with an ease that feels almost ancient, as if they have always been here and the rest of us are simply passing through. The documentary Kedi (2016), directed by Ceyda Torun, follows seven of these cats across Istanbul's neighborhoods. It catches something true about the city: cats here are not curiosities, not

Early European travelers to Ottoman cities wrote about many things that surprised them: the architecture, the markets, the food. One subject appeared in their accounts with particular consistency. Cats slept undisturbed in mosque courtyards. Dogs stretched out in the sun on major thoroughfares. People stopped to feed them without ceremony, as if this were simply what one did. In 1591, the Czech nobleman Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw wrote from Istanbul: "Cats generally gather her