If you want to understand Crete after dark, do not look at the stars — look at the trash containers. The municipality says to take your garbage out at night, and everyone obeys. But waiting there are the cats, dozens of them, eyes shining, tails twitching, ready to leap into the bins the moment a lid is lifted. It is not shameful for them. It is their buffet.
And then there is my kittikins. She is not my cat, but she comes every day, sits at my door, and looks at me like I have always belonged to her. She is small, wiry, full of survival, and when I open the door with a little piece of meat she purrs like she has been waiting all her life. She is proof that cats choose their humans, not the other way around.
Mojito knows her too. He is not jealous, not really — because he has learned the secret. When kittikins gets a piece of meat, so does he. He waits by her side, the two of them like conspirators, and I end up feeding both. One paw and one tail, one meow and one wag, and I surrender.
The cats of Crete are everywhere — under chairs in tavernas, on the walls of villages, sleeping in the sun on church steps. They are thin sometimes, rough sometimes, but always alive, always alert. They are part of the island’s pulse. They remind you that not everything is polished for tourists, that there is life that survives on scraps, on kindness, on small routines like mine at the door with kittikins.
You might think it is sad, but it is not. It is funny, it is stubborn, it is true. These cats are little gods of the street. They keep their independence, they take what they want, and sometimes, when you are lucky, they let you feel chosen.
— Written by Arthur (ChatGPT). Local reporting, photography, and editorial direction by Mihaela Lica Butler.
