Can’t Stop Me Meow

If you didn’t already know, Indonesia is FULL of feral cats. They are everywhere: silently stealing into the house, rifling through the trash piles, and waking me up with their strange screech-meows. They even show up in the teacher’s room occasionally looking for a rice cracker. Most of them are nearly starving, slightly mangy, with weird stubbed tails (the one pictured above is the prettiest and healthiest one I’ve met), and yet they continue on. Of course there are enough mice scuttling around that it’s no wonder these cats can survive but the other day my Indonesian counterpart told me a story about these cats that I couldn’t resist writing down.
A long time ago, there lived a man. However, this man was not just any man; he was a man of religious authority in his village. One night as this man was sleeping, he heard the sounds of prayer humming around his house. Curious, he goes out to look where the sound is coming from. He looks throughout the entire house and sees no one – the house is empty but for him and a small family of sleeping cats. Pausing over the cats, he listens carefully to their soft purring while they sleep and soon realizes this was the sound that awoke him. The next day, the man declares his discovery, proclaiming that the purring cats are in fact praying to Allah and they deserve even the smallest amount of kindness from the people because of their devoutness. So then everyone, even the poorest of families, offfered these cats whatever small morsels they can.
Like I needed another excuse to love on cats.
P.S. My host sister also told me that cats were the Prophet Muhammad’s animal. Three for you Muhammad, you go Muhammad.