A Cup of Kindness in Stone Town
- Arnold Plotnick
- 18 hours ago
- 8 min read
How a simple gesture revealed Zanzibar’s culture of compassion
Kindness toward cats isn’t unusual in Zanzibar, but this particular act — so quiet, so tender — stopped me in my tracks. I was crossing Forodhani Park on my way back to the hotel, the air blazing with a heat even the locals admitted was extreme. An earlier incident that day (I witnessed a cat get hit by a car) had left me flustered, and the brutal sun wasn’t helping. At the corner of the park, a forlorn kitten crouched by a fountain, struggling to find relief from the heat like the rest of us. A tall, slightly awkward young man ambled over, filled a paper cup, and set it down for her. Realizing the cup was too tall, he moved it to a lower ledge, then gently lifted the kitten to it. She bent her head and drank. In that moment, my mood completely shifted, and a long, weary day suddenly felt redeemed.
Zanzibar is a popular tourist destination, and the year before, that’s exactly how I experienced it — sun on the northern beaches, spice markets and alleys in Stone Town, cats at every turn. Their abundance isn’t random. The island is primarily Muslim, and their affection for cats runs deep. The Prophet Muhammad is said to have loved them, and that legacy endures: cats wander freely through mosques, markets, and courtyards. As a lifelong cat lover, I was captivated by how seamlessly they’d woven themselves into everyday life, with the tacit blessing of the people around them. By the time I left, I was already plotting excuses to return.
A year later, I got my chance. A Quebec-based foundation that organizes animal welfare projects abroad was recruiting volunteers for a weeklong sterilization campaign in Stone Town. As a veterinarian, I’d joined several international projects before, most of them dog-focused. I love dogs, but at heart, I’m a cat guy. This project — capturing, sterilizing, and releasing Stone Town’s street cats — felt tailor-made for me.
Visiting the island with a purpose changed everything. This was no longer the Zanzibar of beaches and guidebooks. It was a Zanzibar shaped by volunteers working shoulder to shoulder with locals, and by the small acts of care I never would have noticed as just another tourist.
Making Do, Together
Our first day set the tone. After years running a feline-only practice in New York City, I’d grown accustomed to the conveniences of modern veterinary medicine. In fact, it was that very privilege that nudged me toward this work. I didn’t just want to see more of the world — I wanted to matter in it, maybe improve it in a more tangible way. After decades of treating Gotham’s pampered Persians and haughty Himalayans, I needed to reconnect with what drew me to the profession. I wanted to remind myself what veterinary medicine felt like at its most elemental – no x-rays, no ultrasound, no IV fluid pumps – just skill, teamwork, and shared commitment. So when it came time to improvise, I felt ready.
Still, there were surprises. The first two days were spent on the outskirts of Stone Town, in an unused office building converted into a makeshift hospital. The surgery tables — plastic picnic tables, really — were too low. The solution was simple: rocks under the table legs. Minutes later, a line of Masai tribesmen in brilliantly colored shukas were carrying in boulders, assembly-line style.
Soon the prep station, anesthesia area, and recovery zone were humming, and cats were moving from cage to anesthesia to surgery in a kind of improvised ballet.
I had assumed the building would be air-conditioned — a rookie mistake. In truth, only the surgery suite had AC, and even that was theoretical. The door never stayed closed long enough to trap any cool air. When the power cut out, we strapped on headlamps. When sweat dripped down our foreheads, an assistant dabbed it away with a towel.
Our team was a study in contrasts: Masai tribesmen, Tanzanian and Canadian vets and techs, a Hungarian surgeon, an American (me), and a group of young Muslim women covered head to toe — all focused on one thing: slowing the tide of Zanzibar’s street cats.
Later in the week, the scene shifted. Our new “surgery suite” was the open-air courtyard of Mama Paka, the local cat shelter that had partnered with the Canadians. This was as far removed from my own cat hospital's surgery room as you could fathom. In the controlled world I came from, surgery depended on predictability; here, it depended on improvisation. One afternoon, the sky suddenly opened. Rain came down in sheets. The calm quiet of the courtyard dissolved into a roar on the rooftops and our plastic tarps. We scrambled to cover the tables, but one surgeon was mid-procedure and couldn’t stop. I ran over with an umbrella, holding it over her head — and the patient’s exposed abdomen — as she sutured steadily through the storm.
This particular locale – the courtyard of the building that was home to the local cat shelter – was right in the center of Stone Town, a place that felt both frenetic and timeless. Between surgeries, I’d dash to a nearby bodega to get bottled water and take in the layered life of Stone Town: the call to prayer echoing from the mosque, the smoky drift of grilled seafood being cooked in an alley, the creak of wheelbarrows transporting goods to homes or shops, the laughter of children as they rolled a tire down the street. Always nearby, whether asleep on the steps of the mosque, resting beneath a table at a cafe, or reaching up to a bodega counter and quietly meowing for a snack, there’d be a cat, as much a part of the landscape as the crumbling coral walls that gave the town its name. It was a soundtrack I could never have conjured in any clinic back home.
Authenticity has become the buzzword these days regarding tourism. Seasoned, adventurous travelers are seeking more genuine experiences when they travel – street food, personal interaction with the locals, tours that take you to “hidden” places that most tourist don’t see. Still, the most skillful travel agent could never have designed a more authentic Stone Town experience than this one, and it was this undercurrent of realism that colored every moment: the knowledge that no tourist could ever experience this place the way I was seeing it now.
As in every African nation where I’ve volunteered, local children were eager to join us. Besides the joy of their curiosity, they were genuinely useful. Kids know where the street cats hide. Local residents, hearing what we were doing, greeted us with smiles, water, and food — a kindness much appreciated by volunteers who often had no time (or simply forgot) to eat.
Of course, there were challenges. Some cats evaded capture, some were too frail for surgery, and supplies occasionally ran short. For me, the biggest obstacle was the heat. Seeing “97°F” on your phone’s weather app is one thing; reading feels like 107° is another. "Oppressive" doesn’t cover it. How about ruthless? Maybe savage? Even my thesaurus called it quits in this heat.
Back Where They Belong
The best part of each day came at the end, when our patients — now alert and restless — were ready to be released. These were “community cats.” They didn’t have formal homes, but they belonged to particular neighborhoods where people kept a loose watch over them. We recorded exactly where each cat had been trapped, and we released them in that same spot.
Many came from around the Darajani Market, Stone Town’s bustling bazaar, where meat, fish, and fruit stalls guarantee an endless buffet. It’s the only world they know, and it’s vital they’re returned there. Other cats were brought in from further afield — trapped by residents who coordinated with Sarah, the woman who runs Mama Paka. She loaned out humane traps, they did the catching, and we handled the rest.
Setting down the carrier and opening the door never lost its thrill. Some cats needed coaxing, frozen between fear and familiarity. Others bolted the instant the latch clicked, vanishing into alleys they clearly knew by heart. The best moments were when a local child did the honors — the cat bounding out as neighbors smiled and clapped. Those were small victories: the cats healthier, the community safer, the children giddy. And standing there, watching them reclaim the corners and courtyards they knew so well, I quietly realized our place in all this: we were outsiders lending a hand to something that was already working in its own subtle, imperfect way.
Kindness, in Degrees
What struck me most was how kindness toward cats operated on different levels. Our project was an insular little world, where caring was the obvious, unspoken prerequisite for being there. But outside, in the streets of Stone Town, where kindness for cats was theoretically optional, the benevolence was quieter, more passive, but no less powerful. Families let cats nap beside them on benches. Shopkeepers left out bowls of water. Locals tossed their leftovers at the night market to the inevitable cluster of tabbies at their feet. Nobody ever announced their kindness; it was simply a part of the day’s rhythm, built into the town's DNA.
That’s why the young man with the water cup lingers with me. Our team’s gestures were organized, professional, intentional. His was private, wordless, instinctive. In that small act, I saw a kind of respect reflected in the old story of the Prophet Muhammad cutting the sleeve off his robe rather than disturb a sleeping cat. Centuries apart, but the same impulse: innate compassion, without fanfare.
What Stays with Me
It’s always satisfying to leave a place better than you found it. Our project reduced the swelling population of street cats and improved their health. But when I left Zanzibar, I realized that I, too, was leaving in better shape than I arrived — more connected, more attuned to the subtle kindnesses around me, redeemed by a single, quiet act of compassion I’d witnessed in Forodhani Park.
Now I see kindness differently — not as a grand gesture, but as a quiet state of being. Zanzibar taught me that empathy isn’t a resource you bring to a place. It’s one you uncover when you slow down enough to notice what’s already there.