I’ve probably written about street cats in Tel Aviv hundreds of times – because there is so much to say. but here is an outline that i will fill out in the coming days 1. cats in the ’70’s 2. cats in the ’80’s 3. cats and politics in the first decade of the milennium 4. cats and corona.

1. When I first moved to Tel Aviv I was overwhelmed by the skinny cats peeking out of the garbage cans. Hundreds of thousands all over. Suspicious of humans, they tended to flee when someone passed by, or arch their backs and hiss. And they were ugly and dirty. I had lived in Ramat Hasharon before that and barely saw an animal on the street. it wasn’t even popular to have a pet. Who could afford it or waste time on a cat? My cousin had a dog, now that I think of it, but he had brought it from Italy, and seemed very sophisticated compared to the rest of my neighbors. Maybe it was just my neighborhood… we were pretty primitive – but i loved it. and didn’t even think about missing animals.
2. we moved to the US in the 80’s. Ezi was sent by Israel and we went with. There we acquired a rescue dog. we wanted a small dog, so we picked a puppy with tiny paws. He grew to be enormous – so tall he could stand on all fours, rest his head on the table and point with his nose to the delicacy he wanted. But he had small paws. When we returned to Israel we had to take him with us because we couldn’t find anyone to adopt him. but he was too large for a cage. Eventually we found one and called El Al to ask if they would take him with us, and they said ‘sure, if there are no bodies in the cargo’ and i asked, how will i know, and they said ‘we don’t get advanced information on who will die’ … ah, but that’s another story. anyway this dog learned to fear cats – they would jump on his nose and cover his eyes with their tails… terrifying! Eventually we all learned to live with one another – they even began to demand food from me.
3. in 2008 i was asked to join the municipal animal rights party and run in the local election. i was excited about it – particularly because we had 300000 cats in Tel Aviv and the only way to neuter them was to hold a flash campaign and neuter them all at once, and that needed organization and funding. Reuven Ladnianski was first on the ticket and I was asked to be second, but shied away and went down to number 4. We started our campaign and it was the real thing. I sat on a few municipal meetings and was just beginning to get the hang of it, and then Ezi got sick and I bowed out. Two people got into the municipality, and saw a number of regulations adopted. I think Tel Aviv was the only city in the world with a voting animal rights party! Eventually the party morphed into the Green party which continues today. Dogs learned to live on a leash, and owners learned to pick up after them. The cats became accustomed to being fed by kind inhabitants and became extremely people-friendly, and then attention got turned to the trees…