Sorry I’m Late, I Saw a Cat: Why Street Cats are the Best Travel Guides
This post is inspired by my conversation with Jeff Bogle, author of Street Cats and Where to Find Them, on the Type 2 Travel podcast. If you haven't listened yet, go do that first — or just keep reading and then go do that.
There's a t-shirt in my merch store that says "Sorry I’m late, I saw a cat." It exists because it is, without exaggeration, the most accurate description of what happens to me at least once on every single trip I take.
Interacting with all the street cats in Tbilisi, Georgia.
I'll be mid-tour, supposed to be leading my group from Point A to Point B, and then, there it is. A scrappy little street cat blinking at me from a doorstep in Fez, or curled up on a pile of newspapers in Istanbul, or doing absolutely nothing productive on a bench in Antalya. And just like that, the itinerary is paused.
My group knows to look for me at the back of the pack. Usually I'm back there making sure nobody gets lost. But if I'm nowhere to be found, I'm with a cat. I promise I'll catch up.
What I didn't fully understand until my recent conversation with Jeff Bogle, award-winning travel writer, photographer, and author of Street Cats and Where to Find Them, is that my chaotic cat-chasing habit is actually one of the best things I've ever accidentally done for my travel experience. Turns out, street cats are some of the best travel guides on the planet.
And I have receipts.
They Take You Off the Beaten Path
Here's the thing about tourist attractions: they're full of tourists. Which, fair enough, that's kind of the deal. But the moments that actually change you — the ones you're still thinking about five years later — rarely happen in front of the famous landmark. They happen in the alley you wandered down because a cat disappeared into it.
Jeff described it perfectly: when you follow a cat, you end up in real neighborhoods where real people live. You hear the local language. You watch kids come home from school. You find the tiny restaurant with no English menu and the best food you've ever eaten. You see life as it actually exists there — not the version that was built for you to consume.
That's the whole point of travel, isn't it? To actually be somewhere, not just see it.
They Force You to Slow Down
I'll be the first to admit I am not a natural slow-downer. I want to see everything, do everything, fit six destinations into one trip, and somehow still wake up at 5am for a sunrise photo. Jeff is the same way — self-described relentless, nonstop, always trying to cram more in.
But here's what he told me that I haven't been able to stop thinking about: when a cat gets on your lap, you don't move until the cat moves. That's the rule. Legs fall asleep? Doesn't matter. Had somewhere to be? Renegotiate.
And because of that unwritten rule, Jeff found himself sitting still long enough in Lima's Miraflores neighborhood to watch an open-mic poetry night happen around him, catch a community dance event in the park, and actually feel like he knew that neighborhood instead of just having passed through it.
I've had the same experience. The best moments I've had with locals abroad — the conversations, the laughs, the things I still tell at dinner parties — started because I stopped moving for a cat.
The streets of Greece are actual gold mines for finding furry friends.
They Connect You to Locals in Ways Nothing Else Does
This one is maybe my favorite.
I was in the Medina in Fez a few years ago. We stumbled across a box of kittens in one of the narrow alleyways — a mama cat with her tiny newborns, plus one bigger kitten that had clearly been adopted into the group. A local man noticed us hovering and came over. He spoke no English. We spoke no Arabic.
But he knew exactly what we were confused about. He started bopping each kitten on the head one by one. "Mom," he said. "Mom. Mom." Then he bopped the bigger one. "No mom, just love."
The mama cat had taken in a stray. He was explaining it to us with the best tools he had. And that was it. That was the whole interaction. Maybe one minute, no common language, just a man and a box of kittens and the two of us absolutely losing our minds over it.
My friend and I still say "no mom, just love" to each other. We say it when something is unexpectedly wholesome. We say it when someone shows up for someone they didn't have to. It's become shorthand for something bigger than a kitten story, and it started because we stopped to look at cats in an alley in Morocco.
Jeff had a version of this in Tokyo — he and his wife were at a shrine during a festival, following a cat hoping it would pose just right in front of the orange gates. An elderly Japanese woman appeared, laughing. No shared language. Lots of smiling. Turned out she'd been caring for that specific street cat at that shrine for fourteen years. She had a keychain with the cat's face on it that her friends had made her.
You cannot plan for that. You cannot find that on a tour itinerary. It happens because a cat made you stop.
What Street Cats Can Teach Us About Trust (This One Goes Deep)
Okay, I'm going to get a little philosophical for a second. Bear with me.
Street cats have often been through a lot. Harsh weather, inconsistent food, not always kind treatment from humans. Their whole lives are uncertain in ways that most of our lives, honestly, aren't. And yet, if you crouch down, get on their level, put out the back of your hand and wait, most of them will come to you. They'll assess you, decide you're okay, and give you something real.
Jeff said something about this that genuinely got to me: there are a lot of us who've been through hard things, and it's hard to trust again. But you watch these cats who've been through probably worse, and they're still out there craning their neck and purring for a little chin rub.
That's the kind of thing that sounds like a bumper sticker until you're actually sitting in a park in Peru with a street cat on your lap and you think: yeah, okay. Point taken.
Multi-tasking in Viñales, Cuba.
The Practical Stuff (Because Jeff Also Has Actual Tips)
Since I know someone is going to ask: yes, Jeff has advice on how to feed street cats while you travel responsibly, and some of it surprised me.
Skip the wet food from cans unless you're going to sit there until the cat finishes and then throw it away. Wet food left out attracts bugs and makes things harder for the community cat caretakers working in those areas. Instead, go for dry kibble or individual squeeze tubes of wet food (Churu is the brand — and yes, I ordered some before I left for my current trip). Buy locally when you can, so if a volunteer comes over looking concerned about what you're feeding their cats, you can show them it came from the pharmacy across the street.
And the biggest one: crouch down, be quiet, let them make the first move. If they choose you, congratulations. You've been vetted by one of the most discerning creatures on earth.
The Destinations Worth Going Out of Your Way For
Jeff rates every destination in his book on a scale of one to five toe beans for cat cuddliness. (Yes, this is real. Yes, his editor allowed it.) The five-toe-bean gold standard? Lima, Peru — specifically the Miraflores neighborhood, where three lush parks are full of well-cared-for, friendly, ear-tipped cats who will climb directly onto your lap while you watch open-air poetry nights and eat incredible food.
Other standouts from his book: Istanbul (cats are woven into the literal fabric of city life there), Matera in Italy (stunning but, per Jeff, the least cuddly cats on the planet — 1 toe bean, proceed with low expectations), and Valletta in Malta. He's also got Tokyo, Cairo, Lima, Reykjavik, and 14 other destinations covered.
And yes, he's running a street cat cruise through the Mediterranean this October. Santorini, Dubrovnik, Athens, Malta, Montenegro. If that sounds like your dream vacation, it probably is. Details here.
One of my favorite stops in Chefchaouen, Morocco.
Here's the Real Thing
I've led a lot of group trips. I've been to a lot of places. And the moments that have actually changed how I see the world — the ones that remind me why I do this — are almost never the ones I planned.
They're the ones where I got distracted. Where I wandered off. Where I stopped to look at something small and scrappy and alive, and a stranger appeared, and we laughed about something neither of us could fully explain in the other's language, and I walked away feeling like the world is actually a pretty connected, decent place.
A lot of those moments started with a cat.
So if you see me at the back of the group, falling behind, crouched down next to a doorway somewhere — I'm not lost. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.
Listen to my full conversation with Jeff Bogle on the Type 2 Travel podcast — available on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Jeff's book, Street Cats and Where to Find Them, is available now.