The cats of Athens
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The cats of Athens are the street cat population John Kiriakou credits with keeping the Greek capital free of rats, a point he had made on the show the previous week and was asked to repeat.

The claim

"There there are no rats in in Athens because there are, you know, 150,000 cats or whatever it is, a million cats, I don't know." He gives the figure loosely and twice, without settling it.

What tourists do with them

"And you know, tourists love the cats. They they'll come up to your to your table at a restaurant and you give them a little smelt or a shrimp or whatever and they purr and you know brush up against you. But as a result there are no rats in Greece."

The contrast

What interests Kiriakou is the reversal of expectation for an American. "It's just a completely alien thought to to you know think that oh you sit down at a restaurant you see a rat run across the uh the pavement."

He moved directly from there to his own city, which he ranks second only to New York, see Washington, rat central.

See also

- Washington Rat City
- The Parthenon-view condo
- Kiriakou's Athens house
