Swimming Pools

What on earth to write about Swimming pools? Frankly, the topic's wasted on me as I never learned to swim. However, I know some cats that do, so we're heading off to Türkiye today (not literally). I haven't yet visited that country, but I've long been intrigued by its breed of swimming cats and by the cascading thermal pools of Pamukkale. I once thought they went together.  I was misinformed. No matter. I pair them up here for your delectation and will finish with a new cat poem that's not entirely on theme. 😸

otherworldly Pamukkale

Pamukkale is an UNESCO world heritage site in south-western Türkiye. Its terraces are made of travertine, a spectacularly shimmering white limestone deposited by mineral waters which have been cascading down from hot springs into its layered pools for millennia. The name in Turkish means 'cotton castle' and it is easy to see why.

There are seventeen hot springs and the waters at source vary in temperature from 35C to nearly boiling. By the time they have mingled and flowed down the cliff to the pools below they are pleasantly warm the year round.

Pamukkale's thermal springs and pools have been attracting visitors since antiquity. The ancient Greek city of Hierapolis, founded as a spa resort, stands above the springs on the site of what was once a cult centre of the Phrygian mother goddess Cybele. It was founded in the 3rd century BC and there is abundant evidence, in the ruins of the city and its nearby necropolis, that many came to the pools for their supposedly - though clearly not always successful - curative powers.

Although this otherworldly site is now carefully curated, it is still possible with permission for visitors to bathe and swim in designated pools at Pamukkale today.

I was led to believe, many years ago, that Türkiye's swimming cats regularly enjoyed the waters of Pamukkale, an unfortunate conflation of facts. The snag is a geographical one, for Pamukkale, as stated, is in the south-western region of the country in Denizli province, while the water-loving cats live over a thousand kilometres away in Anatolia, eastern Türkiye, near Lake Van from which they derive their name...and in which they do swim.

They are distinguished by their snow-white fur, except for brown markings on their head and ears and their brown hind-quarters and tails. They also have odd coloured eyes (quite common elsewhere in white cats, apparently). It is believed they have lived around Lake Van as a feral landrace for several thousand years, originally brought there as pest control by early Anatolian settlers. 

swimming Van cat

Nowadays there are only a couple of hundred pure Van cats living wild in their native area, but breeding programmes have spread their numbers around the world in the last thirty or so years. I wonder if this domesticated diaspora will retain its love of swimming. Only time will tell. I'm just thinking that if I were a Van cat, I'd love to swim in the year-round warm pools of Pamukkale.

I was originally going to call this latest poem Mrs Schrödinger's Pussy, in an oblique cultural reference to the 1970s TV series 'Are You Being Served' and its standing joke about Mrs Slocombe's Pussy, but on consideration I thought it deserved more gravitas than that. 

It is based on the lives of Erwin Schrödinger (of Schrödinger's Cat fame) and his wife Annemarie and the essentials are absolutely true. As well as being a brilliant (and Nobel Prize winning) physicist, he was a serial philanderer with a predilection for young girls. He was twice Annemarie's age when they married in 1920. She was a photographer and supported him financially for many years. As a couple they were childless and she did have a cat called Milton (and another called Marvell, as it happens). She also remained loyal to him despite his many transgressions. The twist is my whimsical invention. 

Mrs Schrödinger's Cat

In the dull red glow 

of an ornate Austrian washroom, 

expectant faces stand by the bath. 

Something is developing slowly

between Anny and Erwin.

They don't speak, don't touch.

 

She's teaching him,

who is so cleverly theoretical,

the practical art of the photograph -

learned in her youth

from her father, chief lensman 

by appointment to the Royal Court.

It ought to vex her

in years to come,

married to a man twice her age,

that they still survive

mostly off her wage

while he tutors young girls

 

and researches particles and waves,

strays away for days and nights

so that sometimes 

when she's half sleeping 

she doesn't know if he's out or in.

But she has her cat,

jet black and blind like the poet

after whom he's named.

So Erwin frames his wife: white-dressed

and clutching furry Milton to her breast 

in affectionate pose...

and now they're waiting the reveal.

Anny checks a stopwatch

as the magic starts to happen

and a grainy image emerges:

her languid figure, her happy smile,

her empty arms. They stare. Both know

the camera never lies and yet

there's no cat in the photograph,

not even a blurry shadow 

of Milton's cradled feline form.

Her white dress, her empty arms,

her knowing smile, his reeling brain.

This is some serious sorcery.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)