The Joel L. Harrison Memorial Alley-Rabbit Squad

Some of you may know that I love cats. If you don't, we have never met and you have never heard of me.

Tel Aviv is known for bring overrun with stray cats. Some are feral, some are downright love-machines. But they are EVERYWHERE. I love being in a city that is positively covered in cats. They are on the street, on front stoops, sleeping curled up in potted plants, standing on the dumpsters of restaurants, walking around in outdoor cafes, walking in and out of the open-front stores that define the city as non-American, and, in particular, they are waiting for me to get home.

When I first moved here, there was a very skanky-looking cat that had what I believed to be a cut or a sore on her side. She was skinny and her fur was unclean and she was a total mess. And she lived in my yard. I felt sorry for her, but I wouldn't touch her, because, if she did carry a disease, I didn't want to risk transferring it to my cats.

After speaking with a woman who is heavily involved in the spaying-and-neutering of stray cats in the city, I found out that there is a procedure they sometimes use on females in which they go in through her side to spay her. As the cut began to heal, I realized that she was recently neutered.

In Tel Aviv, because of the tremendous stray cat problem, the city has actually gotten involved in taking care of it. Intact males and females are captured either by a citizen, or by the Municipality, spayed or neutered, and either put into a shelter (if there is room) or returned to the street. Most of them are returned to the street, and I believe they are even returned to the place where they were originally captured. This is so forward-thinking. Instead of killing the cats because there are no homes for them, they merely take away the cats' abilities to reproduce. And almost everyone gets involved to some extent, either feeding the cats or calling the Municipality to take care of them. Several organizations exist that will give discounts on food to people who feed the cats.

Since some of them are feral, you have to earn their trust before you have any hope of capturing them. You can tell an intact cat from a neutered one by their ears. When a cat is neutered, one of its ears is docked, so it has one full ear, and one ear with a flat-top. I had no idea that my little Isabelle, considered deformed because of the loss of half of one ear to frostbite, would be one among many in Israel. Not that she sees them. My angels stay indoors.

But I digress, again. In order to earn the trust of a feral cat, you have to feed it regularly and not try to touch it until it is good and ready. I try to feed the cats in the morning before I go to Ulpan, and in the evening, before it gets dark but after the heat of the day. At any given feeding, I can have anywhere between 6 and 18 cats waiting for me. There was a pregnant one for a while. She disappeared for a week or so, and has reappeared thinner and still with complete ears. I did not earn her trust in time. Now there is another one. There are several young kittens that come around, but are all very hand-shy. I put food near them and try to keep greedy adult cats at bay so their cute little behinds can eat.

I have named my gang of cats the Joel L. Harrison Memorial Alley-Rabbit Squad. I fooled around with other names, but this one is too perfect. My Grandfather, Joel Harrison, referred to cats as 'Alley-Rabbits' to egg me and my Mom on, as he was a dog person. Since these cats truly are Alley-Rabbits, more or less, the name seems perfect.

And the formerly-skanky one, who grows thicker and cleaner every day, I now call "My Wife", because she nags me every time I open the gate. She starts screaming at me for food every time she sees me and does not let up. She has a very loud voice. My neighbors love that I call her "My Wife". I also now have "My Husband", a very handsome tabby with green eyes and a sweet demeanor. More than food, he seems starved for love. He rubs up against the bag of food until I feed the others, and then I pet him for a while. He is a wonderful cat, neutered, and I adore him, but I still wash my hands and legs and any other part he touches before I touch my own cats. Although Feline Leukemia and Feline AIDS don't seem to be as much of a problem here, I take no chances when it comes to my angels, who are vaccinated anyway. And there is no vaccination against fleas, so I am very careful.

My project is really to earn the trust of the complete-eared cats, who still need neutering. At any feeding, it is usually about 50/50, neutered/un-neutered. The kittens are what kill me, with their big eyes and little tiny faces. When I feel that they trust me, I have to betray that trust and call the municipality on them. At least I know that they will not be killed, and that I may see them again soon. They may not trust me again, but, then again, cats are not necessarily known for long-term memory. And besides, I won't be anywhere around when the cat-catchers come. I will be safely hiding in my apartment, or at Ulpan, or at the cafe up the street that is like a second home to me.

I am impressed that a country smaller than New Jersey, with limited resources and constantly at war, makes time to deal with cats in a humane way. Not with euthanizing, but with neutering in a catch-and-release program. Tel Aviv is partially known for its cats. And you can't go anywhere without seeing lots of them. I hope that, someday, America will catch up to Israel in its treatment of animals.

The Joel L. Harrison Memorial Alley-Rabbit Squad may need to go worldwide. Maybe that is my mission here.

Somewhere, my Grandfather is either laughing his ass off or cursing me out.