Introduction: The Cat's Tale in Israel
Many people have written histories of the glorious pussycat in Israel, but hey, why not add our take, we thought.
The most common histories declare that our feline population is due to the British importing them on their ships. Of course, there are many delightful cat tales in British lore, proving that those sailors adored their kitties. So, we decided to add a little twist and go back further, to how cats got to Britain, when we ran into a question that was so obvious: if the British brought the cats, how is it that cats are discussed in Talmud?
After preliminary research, we came to the first part of a quick-and-easy theory: most of the text concerning the noble kitty, and the more positive, comes from the Babylonian Talmud, written by men from different countries than those who wrote the Jerusalem Talmud. The myriad factors that lead to that reasoning is a whole ‘nother post (or posts).
Still, the Jerusalem group did show experience with cats, so there must have been enough in the area to study them (we will be dedicating a page on the site to list that sort of resource; just stick with us), so the second part of my theory is that the fault was not one of indigenous species, but that the British imports seriously overloaded Israel’s ecological balance.
Which would bring us to the present, and to what is now a species out of control, and how we can help:
As always, we ask our dear readers to consider purchasing from Jerusalem Cat Syndrome–you get a nifty gift and the knowledge that money has been donated to our favorite cause, the Society for the Welfare of Jerusalem Street Cats.
