Cats in Israel - Gilgulim, Polite, or Rabid?

Lately, gaggles of cats have been hanging out in our neighborhood. One particular cat (ok, 2 cats) have been semi-adopted by us, and we feed it whatever would normally be thrown away (we like to think that having the cats around will keep mice away).

We found it strange that when we give one cat expired cottage cheese, instead of eating it by putting their face into the cottage cheese container, the cat places its paw in the container, scoops up the cottage cheese, and then politely licks the cheese off its paw.

Our cat-crazy-cousin think that's normal behavior for cats, but we're not so sure.

Judge for yourselves.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

Cats, Mice and Heter Mechira

"I just want to you know that I'm impressed."

My wife paid me this valuable compliment last week.

Granted, I deserved it, but it was nice receiving it regardless.

My daughter "D1" informed me, "You know Abba, you really yelled loudly when you chased that mouse around the house."

About a year ago, our yishuv was plagued by the mouse syndrome. We had no clue where they coming from, how they were getting into the house, or where they were hanging out. Yet the phrase "I smell a rat" was never truer when my wife announced we had a mouse in the house last year (her keen sense of smell is only matched by my sharp instincts for waffles).

We purchased a few mouse trap cages, filled them with salami and peanut butter bait, and started catching mice -- we even managed to catch 2 in one cage. I would don heavy work gloves and drive the mice a few miles down the road and release them into the wild.

If only...if only we had a better solution. And then, one day about 5 months ago, he arrived.

The regal feline would cavort back and forth between our next door neighbor's home and ours
in search of food and affection. Silly me. I thought "adopting" a cat would be a low maintenance
project.

Along with the table scraps we fed the creature daily, we splurged and purchased *cat food* for the beast.

The cat flies into our house every time we open the front door, and then spend a few minutes "shooing" it out of the house.   (Important Oleh Tip: the Hebrew equivalent of "scat" used to shoo away a cat, is "kishtah")

So the cat adopted us, we adopted it, and for the first time since our goldfish died our household had a pseudo pet.

Our disposition changed last week when my wife announced, "I smell a rat" -- and the mice were back. We would growl at the cat, "Hello?! What are we feeding you for?!" We would even invite the cat in to hunt for the mouse, but all it cared about was more table scraps or ready to eat cat food.

The new generation of mice were different -- they weren't fooled into climbing into the traps we set. Not cages, not glue traps...not the lure of Bamba, peanut butter, salami, or even their new favorite dish, avocado -- which we find partially eaten morning after morning, on the kitchen counter (yuck!)

Day by day we got increasingly annoyed at the cat.

Finally, one morning last week, one of the kids screamed in my ear to wake me up; "ABBA! Wake up!! There's a mouse downstairs!"

Tumbling down the stairs, I needed to appear fearless. After all, how could a member of our combat counter-terror unit be afraid of a mouse?

Putting on my heavy work gloves and brandishing a broom, I gingerly opened the bottom drawer of the oven. The grey mouse gaped at me wide eyed; cornered at last! With a killer yell, as I banged the broom in the general direction of the mouse, and it jumped out, scampering across the floor. Continuing the yell, I chased it around the downstairs -- even opening the screen door to give it ample chances to escape. Stupid mouse. It didn't go out the door but kept hiding in the corners of the room.

"Bring in the cat!" I roared -- and the kids tried getting the cat into the house, but to no avail.

The stupid cat had no interest in the mouse whatsoever.

After an aggressive to and fro chase around the room, I smacked the mouse with the broom, and it went into convulsions.

"EEEEEWWWWWW" was the general consensus in the house, while I was very pleased with myself for mortally wounding the annoying rodent.

"Get the cat," I insisted -- "let's show it what its supposed to do." The cat gingerly approached the dying mouse, but turned head on heels and fled out the door.

Disposing the bleeding mouse in the garbage I had no sympathy for it whatsoever. I had given it an escape route out the screen door, given it the opportunity to get caught in a cage -- and I would have released it far away.

Yet what will be of our cat? I shudder to think I just wrote "our" cat. It's THE cat, not ours. But the stupid pet grew on us.

I guess I'll take it to the vet one of these days, get some shots for it, and keep feeding it like we have till now.

However...today I saw on YNET one of the most annoying "religion" articles yet, announcing a "Kosher Cat" that had been halachiklly neutered according to the same principle of "heter mechira". Having written extensively about Shmita on my blog before, I found it offensive that
someone (a layman) "decided" what the halacha is, or isn't, concerning their cat -- "sold" it to a Moslem to be neutered, and then "purchased" it back.

Shmuel Dovrat, a young religious animal lover, recently came up with a creative solution for the halachic ban on neutering pets. Dovrat sold his beloved cat Ponti to a Muslim friend who spayed the feline, and bought it back from her immediately after the procedure.

"Our cat, Pontius Pilatus, reached sexual maturity and started peeing all over the house," Dovrat recounted, explaining this is one of the side effects of sexual arousal in cats.

Dovrat and his wife realized that without spaying Ponti they would not be able to keep him, but every halachic ruling they consulted made it clear that neutering an animal was strictly forbidden.

Throwing Ponti out into the street would have been cruel, and leaving him in the current situation would have also caused the cat to suffer, said Dovrat. And so, he and his wife decided to explore halachic sources in a bid to seek a solution to the dilemma.

After thoroughly reading through the rulings of some of the greatest Halacha adjudicators, Dovrat came to the conclusion that the halachic ban on neutering refers to farm animals, and not to pets.

However, in order to be absolutely sure his actions did not violate Jewish law, he decided to sell Ponti to a Muslim friend and have her take the cat to the vet for the operation. Once the cat has recovered, Dovrat bought it back from the friend, paying the same price he got for selling it earlier, and also reimbursing her for the cost of the operation.

"I have no doubt that an adjudicator knows more about the Halacha than I do, but I feel uncomfortable with some of the rulings. I don't like to be fed halachic solutions with a spoon. It's always important for me to know the source and understand the process that led to the ruling," Dovrat explained.

However, Ramat Gan's Chief Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, who about a year ago ruled that surgical neutering was forbidden by the Halacha, said he did not agree with Dovrat's solution.

Ariel explained that while the great adjudicators indeed allowed Jews to let their Muslim neighbor spay their animal for them, if he wished to do so, they were never allowed to initiate such a moved themselves.

Ariel, who supports "hormonal neutering," also rejected the claim that refraining from spaying a pet constitutes cruelty to animals. "People buy dogs and cats in order to entertain their children, and not out of concern for the pets' welfare. If they are worried that the animals might have puppies and that no home could be found for them, they should find another form of entertainment to begin with," he stated.

R' Kook would be mortified...I'm disgusted.

PS: There's a legend that the cats of Eretz Yisrael are all gilgulim...



Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael