Cats

Cats have a small but recurring role in the novel, moving between the everyday streets of Istanbul and the private judgments of Kemal Basmacı’s family. They appear as animals following fish carts, but also as a test of character: Kemal’s mother repeatedly invokes love of cats when imagining which woman could make her son happy.

Street Animals and Everyday Life

During a meal with Sibel Hanım at Fuaye, Kemal talks around their predicament by describing fish in Istanbul. He recalls seeing bonito and bluefish sold from horse-drawn carts in Fatih, with cats following the vendors. The detail belongs to the city’s ordinary life, but in the conversation it also serves as a diversion: Kemal knows Sibel Hanım is distressed and cannot offer her either new information or hope, so he dwells on fish and the cats trailing the carts instead of addressing their relationship.

A Measure of Domestic Happiness

After Kemal returns home, his mother tries to console him by imagining that he will meet a kinder, more beautiful, and more understanding woman. In that vision, a woman who does not love cats could never make a man happy. The remark turns affection for cats into a domestic qualification, part of the mother’s hopeful picture of a suitable future partner rather than a passing preference.

Later, Kemal realizes that his mother knows about Füsun, though she has chosen another explanation for the end of his engagement to Sibel Hanım. She calls Sibel Hanım ambitious, haughty, and proud, then presents her dislike of cats as an early warning sign. Kemal has no memory of Sibel Hanım hating cats, and notes that this is the second time his mother has used the claim against her. The repeated judgment therefore tells as much about the mother’s way of interpreting romantic failure as it does about Sibel Hanım.

Recurrence and Contrast

The cats connect two different modes of attention. On the street, they are part of a concrete urban scene, following fish vendors; in the family home, they become a shorthand for the warmth and compatibility Kemal’s mother hopes to find in his future. Her rule is gently comic in its certainty, especially beside Kemal’s painful, unresolved attachments. Yet the motif also shows how she tries to turn emotional upheaval into a manageable domestic explanation: a small preference becomes evidence in her account of who might make her son happy.