…Kuching.

Perhaps I should explain? The name of Sarawak’s fascinating, charming capital city is also the Malay word for ‘cat’. (My favourite of a number of theories is that it comes from ‘mata kuching’, literally ‘cat’s eye’, local name for the longan fruit). Whatever the reason, cats are the symbol of the city, and crop up all over the place.

There’s the world’s first cat museum*.  There’s the cute feline that welcomes you to the city and is dressed up for festivals – Indian clothes for Deepavali, Chinese for Chinese New Year, Malay for Eid etc…

 

 

And then – there are car number plates. All of which, for cars registered in Sarawak, begin with the letter Q. Which is pretty unusual; most licensing authorities don’t use a letter which, at a distance, can be easily confused with ‘0’…

However, if you look at it in the same way as the feline fancying Sarawak authorities do – well then, I guess the letter Q does indeed look like a cat sitting down, viewed from the back….

*No, we didn’t visit. Although, or was it because, we were told it has over 4000 exhibits, many of which are from the personal collection of the Sarawak Chief Minister. It’s in the North City Hall, in case you want to go. (Kuching has two City Halls, North and South. But that’s another story).