Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Where Are the Cats?

Traveling across India for three weeks, we saw, let’s see—how many cats? Ah yes: two. Lots of dogs—mostly strays, apparently, lounging outside major tourist sites, oddly passive and non-threatening. But cats, almost zilch.

Meanwhile, we read that there are about 1,700 tigers left in India, down 50 percent since 2001-02 (one went missing from a wildlife preserve near our hotel in Jaipur, but we didn't see him).

So, where did the cats go? Did they all go to Rome? Were they eaten by the tigers? Shot by poachers who mistook them for tigers? At 1,700 to two, are there really more tigers than cats?

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