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rfmcdonald
From Metro.co.uk:
This is Zaytouna.
As you can see he’s a kitten and he was just too precious to leave behind.
Along with thousands of other Syrians, Zaytouna’s owner fled the dangerous conditions of his homeland.
Tucking the adorable young cat in a sling, the guy made the potentially perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea in the hopes of reaching Europe.
The cat "Zayouna", taking its name from an Arabic word meaning olive, managed with his family to arrive safely on the shores of the Greek island of Lesbos. There, he was photographed by writer Tamara van der Patten, who shared the image on her Twitter account.
One useful thing that I think this essay communicates is the extent to which the Syrian refugees do not come from profound poverty. Syria before the civil war had its issues, but in many ways it was a middle-income society not wholly unfamiliar to we high-income folks. Why would they not have things like cell phones and pet cats? Why would they not try to keep them, even as they fled for their lives? If we know these things have value to us, these Syrians certainly know this, too.
