In Istanbul, uniquely for a Muslim country, stray dogs are tolerated and are “regulated” by the city government. One day I saw a huge pack stampeding down the road en mass. Turks seemingly have a penchant for owning giant dogs, too.

Turks breed kagals. Hearding dogs big enough to keep bears and wolves away.

Those are scary big dogs.

I thought this was universal (in Greece) until I moved in the city center of Athens. I now only see stray dogs as an exception, e.g. in tourist-heavy, central places. I genuinely have no idea if it's the state's responsibility.

Cats of course, are still everywhere.

The stray dogs pretty much run Volos, which is the least touristy Greek city I know of.

City hall feeds them and somebody even grooms them.

> what's truly wild is the number of stray cats, especially in the suburbs!

The smell of a cat colony has to be smelt to be believed. It’s up there with the worst smells I’ve experienced.

That's an interesting triple entendre sentence build around "smelt", which is a past tense (archaic maybe?) of smell, often written smelled, and a smelt is a little silver fish, so quite stinky, and smelt is liquid metal.

That's a rare sentence that pretty much works all three ways.

Yikes. It was 3am and I was sleepless. Smelt rather than smelled… poor.