This was what human beings were like: they liked to be trusted. It was a feeling that inwardly satisfied them in their role as the master of life, its great and sole creator. Despite their short and painful lives, their foolishness and selfishness, these flawed and imperfectly born gods regarded such trust as the only form of worship worthy of them. And yet they also took pleasure in betraying it. For they loved change, and loved perceiving themselves differently at different moments and in different circumstances.”
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, A Mind at Peace (Huzur)
If we regard the transition to settled life some twelve thousand years ago as the beginning of civilization, human beings achieved it alongside the animals they domesticated. As settlements grew and developed into cities, people continued to incorporate certain animals into their lives in different ways.
The further urban animals were removed from nature, and from their own nature, the more dependent they became on humans. Humans, in turn, determined the fate of those under their dominion as they pleased. They decided which animals would live on the streets and which would live in their homes. They subjected them to both affection and violence. Some were taken in; others were abandoned. Some people devoted themselves to feeding animals on the streets, sharing their own solitude with creatures that had no one else. Many animals were also killed for no reason at all.
Loneliness, happiness, abandonment, coexistence, solidarity, a shared fate. The story of urban life has been written together with the animals of the city.
