'Kedi' a cat-egorically lovable feline documentary

Without cats, the city of Istanbul would lose part of its soul.

That's one of many poetically grandiose assertions to be found in Ceyda Torun's lovable, feline-friendly documentary "Kedi."

Hundreds of thousands of cats live in the Turkish city of Istanbul, and most belong to no one. They roam the streets as a perpetual, unofficial welfare underclass dependent upon the kindness and food scraps of strangers.

With this doc, Istanbul-born Torun shares her love and cultural appreciation for cats on a level just below the deity status afforded the animals by ancient Egyptians.

"God brings us closer to Him in different ways," a man confesses. "For me, it was these animals."

Torun could have simply slapped together random shots of cute kitties meowing, jumping and preening, sprinkled in a few talking heads spouting Hallmark card cat-echisms, and called it a wrap.

Nope. She and her filmmaking team do things the hard, interesting way.

Cameraman Charlie Wuppermann frequently lowers the lens down to a cat's eye-level, enabling us to glide along the cobblestone streets behind the felines, gaining an empathetic appreciation of their world perspective.

Torun chose seven cats with highly different personalities as her stars. She and editor Mo Stoebe then constructed fluidly connected sequences, as if Torun storyboarded the action, then directed the feline stars how to exit and enter each shot so the segment would cut together like a Hollywood movie.

"Kedi" runs a scant 79 minutes, slightly padded with numerous, lingering shots of Istanbul streets, alleys, harbors and mountains, plus slow-motion ocean waves.

"Cats know that people are the middlemen to God's will!" an Istanbul human burbles.

A noble soul boldly asserts, "Our responsibility is to take care of them as best we can."

Just when you might think Istanbul treats its animals better than its homeless and poor, a local cat aficionado optimistically waxes that by studying how we deal with felines, "maybe we'll solve our own problems."