He’s fat and lazy, orange and indifferent. He’s Garfield of Ephesus, the stray short-haired ginger tabby cat who hangs out in front of the amphitheatre at the 2,000-year-old ruins in Ephesus, Turkey. He’s named after the famous comic strip feline Garfield, who’s also a notoriously curmudgeonly laggard.
My wife, Kerry, and I come across the ancient-ruins version of Garfield on a Ephesus tour off a that glided into the nearby port city of Kusadasi on Turkey’s west Mediterranean coast. We find him elegantly prone on a piece of broken column, holding court like he owns this UNESCO World Heritage site of Roman Empire-era ruins. Our group is immediately enamoured.
We coo and pat and scratch the dozy mini-tiger. His eyes are half-closed in passivity and there’s only a slight purr and tail flick. His apathy makes us even more intrigued.
Our guide, Amit, tells us some workers at the archeological site befriended him because he’s regal and unafraid when many of the other resident feral cats are skittish. Of course, they feed and give water to Garfield and all the other cats. And one of the enterprising workers even set up the @garfield_of_ephesus Instagram account to keep the world updated on the dilatory feline and provide a place for tourists to contribute photos of their interactions with him.
So far, 6,003 people follow his Instagram account. The account was inspired by the @hagiasophiacat Instagram, which has 106,000 followers and chronicles what’s going on with th.