Temple Cat
Lhasa, Tibet 2007 Drepung Monastery
This little cat has its work cut out for it. I’ve read that Buddhist Monasteries have a large rat population because Buddhists don’t believe in killing anything, not even a nasty rodent like a rat. In one account, Old Pu’s Travel Diary, the author tells of standing on a monastery kitchen floor thick with scurrying rats. Ugh!
That reminds me of a rat temple we visited in Bikaner, India. I didn’t actually go in. First, I would never willingly enter a space occupied with even one rat, but worse than that was the requirement that all who entered must do so barefooted!! Can you imagine? My husband did go in, barefoot and all, and he filmed the rats and the people who had come to pray at the temple. The rats weren’t as large as I had thought they might be, but still…