George, The Morrocats, and The Rooster Who Can’t Tell Time: Now with pictures

Ok, so given my tendency to ramble and inability to tell stories in any kind of chronological order, I’m going to be posting in terms of general topics. And right now I’m going to talk about cats, a dog, and a rooster. Also I’m lazy and haven’t pulled more of my pictures yet so they’ll go up later.

Update: Pictures. Of Cats. 

Here in Rabat, there are cats everywhere.  Literally EVERYWHERE.  Every street corner, every alley, piled in the shade under every tree.  The overwhelming majority are certainly not pets, though people seem willing to toss scraps their way often enough to keep the population in the billions.  (I’ll restrain myself from posting a picture of cats fighting over chicken heads, since it’s not for the faint of heart or stomach…)  These cats seem to mostly disregard anyone or anything, unless it involves food, and I’ve nearly tripped on several because they couldn’t be bothered to move out of the middle of the sidewalk.  I have seen some pretty horrendous eye infections and ear mite infestations among this horde of white and yellow calicos, but in general Moroccans don’t seem to notice or be concerned by it.  The idea of pets doesn’t exist in Morocco the way it does in the U.S., so that’s been interesting to see.

One last thing about cats is the yowling.  With so many cats everywhere, they are bound to get into fights.  My issue is that I’ve snapped awake at 3:00 in the morning to sobbing and screaming several times, only to realize that it’s just cats fighting outside my window.  Their yowling is eerily human (kind of like the sound of babies bawling) and absolutely nerve-rattling in the middle of the night.

The animals people are most familiar here are cows and chickens and the like, which generally appear as hunks of meat hanging in market stalls.  And as someone who did not grow up on a farm, I can’t say that I’m ever going to get used to seeing cow feet hanging up (I think that’s what they are, but I haven’t exactly tried to examine them super closely), or live chickens chilling in cages next to their headless, plucked counterparts. (It’s even more unsettling when I remember that those chicken heads mostly get tossed out for the cats to fight over.)

There aren’t really any dogs here, pets or strays. I think I’ve only seen three strays slinking around, and a single pet foofy dog (kind of looked like a Pekinese) hanging out at one of the shops. Dogs (“kelb” in Darija) are considered sort of ‘unclean,’ and we may have gotten a few strange looks since our kelb George started escorting us everywhere.  George (who is a girl, as far as anyone can tell) adopted us more than we adopted her.  She hung out outside the hotel our study abroad group stayed at for orientation, then began chaperoning us everywhere we went for our program – from the Hotel Darna to the Center for Cross-Cultural learning to the Arabic Education Annex – and attempted to sneak into several buildings with us. 

She has apparently laid claim to Bab Laalou and the neighborhood Marassa, and chases off or pins into submission any dog or cat she finds on her turf.   George seems pretty intent on indefinitely continuing her job as professional SIT study abroad escort, and has refused to be lured away from us by a program coordinator’s offer of food.  (Just to clarify, no one tries to pet her, for all she seems friendly enough.  And I don’t know why or when we named her George.)

This is George. She's pretty cool.

Also, there’s this rooster.  And it crows basically every five minutes at random.  Not at dawn.  Not once on the hour, every hour.  But all the time, outside the window of our group’s conference room.  A testament to the juxtaposition of rural elements in a continually developing urban setting.