Why of course a stray cat discovered the ruins of a 1st C BCE Roman catacomb this week.
Why of course a stray cat discovered the ruins of a 1st C BCE Roman catacomb this week. As we learned on our travels this summer, ancient cities are stray animal habitats. And the cats of Rome are quite famous. Two men chased a stray meowing cat from their apartment complex down Via di Pietralata in a residential neighborhood of Rome, when the cat scampered into a grotto.
Stray Kitty of Mevlana Lodge, Istanbul
What the men found when they climbed into the underground chamber were some 2000 year old tombs and bones.
Where you have an ancent city with ancient ruins, you’ll find stray cats, and maybe as in this case, a few bones. Although Mirko Curti the cat chaser was starteled and amazed to discover the catacombs, modern Romans tend to see these discoveries as an annoyance. The Guardian writes:
Romans are often underwhelmed and sometimes irritated to find they are living on top of priceless remains. Shoppers arriving at the Ikea store on the outskirts of Rome leave their cars alongside a stretch of Roman road unearthed in the car park, while fans queueing to enter the city’s rugby stadium need to skirt around archaeologists excavating the Roman necropolis that stretches under the pitch. At the concert hall complex next door, halls had to be squeezed around an unearthed Roman villa.
What appears to be an annoying archeological nuisance for one may be a teaming metropolis for another.
the kitties of the ancient city of Ephesus
