About our company name and logo

I didn't know I was a cat person until I was preparing to go to Israel for nine months, and a doppelgänger (a dopple-catter?) showed up on my doorstep to keep me company while I packed.

Israel is resplendent with cats, all flavors of cats. The region had its native population when the British showed up on ships filled with British cats along to eat the British rats and when they got here . . . well, now we have many, many, many cats. (What we don't have are squirrels, but I'm all right with that.)

Still, the cats didn't glide into my consciousness until a brief return to the US to pack up my apartment, and the first night, so was the cat that had visited before I left: my neighbor said that she hadn't seen the cat for the whole nine months that I'd been gone. That gave me pause (yes, yes, "paws" in the long run!)

Back in Israel, I began to notice the furry purries everywhere, and I realized what miraculous creations they are, how beautiful and beautifully formed: they could only have come from the Intelligent Creator above. How perfect an adorable, deadly creature that walks like a supermodel because it has no collarbone and does it on toe beans and murder mittens?!

I like dogs, I do, but it's just not the same--there are so many different-looking critters that all come under the heading "dog". A poodle versus a St. Bernard. A cockapoo versus a Great Dane. Cats are mostly always cat-shaped, cat-faced, and -whiskered, and -earred, and -tailed, and purred, and solid and liquid--and possibly gas--at the same time, from the tip of its little twitching nose to the tip of its little swishing tail. 

Mostly the weight of a bowling ball although way less easy to control; ingenious and disingenuous; shy to the point of disappearing before your eyes and suddenly gracing your face with the up-close-and-personal; squishy, toasty, rubbery, adoring, punishing, silent, insistent, zoomie, blinky, finicky, flirty, vain and modest and fastidious, nosy and aloof, turn-on-a-dimeable, fit-in-your-armable--all the moods of woman and man and more--in a silky, twitchy coat of every hair a revelation of color and technology. Wild and weird and wonderful and floopy is the Feline. 

I started following them around the city, fascinated by their paths, photographing their play, and other fanciers (lovingly fanatics) noticed me. Before I could meow aloud I was walking a two-kilometer circuit, three days a week, with a huge bag of food, plastic bowls, and several liters of water. 

Kittens are cute, but when you feed litter after litter . . . and herein lies the problem: we have just so many cats but-just-so-many volunteers and just-so-many facilities, and yes, we are very keen on Trap/Neuter/Release! But food and trappers and doctors and medicines and facilities cost money. With every purchase from Jerusalem Cat Syndrome, you help us save more of Jerusalem's Holy City Kitties from overpopulating, which will lessen the chances of disease and starvation for all the rest. 

ABOUT the company name: "Jerusalem Syndrome" is a type of psychosis that hits some people in Jerusalem, Israel. As the Jewish Virtual Library describes it,  

Not that I think that I or the Cat will save the world, but it's my syndrome and I'm digging in my claws. I am inspired to praise the wisdom of the Creator Who designed the Cat, and this remarkable land we live in. That’s why our logo is an homage to Jerusalem’s logo, transforming the legendary Lion of Judah into the more ubiquitous Kitty Cat of Jerusalem. 

Every purchase from this site puts money "in the kitty", or you can leap over us and donate directly to my chosen organization, The Association for Jerusalem Street Cats.

If you're not quite ready to commit with cash, or you just like cat-related merch or the occasional bit of feline-related material, sign up for our emails so we can stay in touch. It’ll just be a gentle, toe-bean touch, I promise.  

   

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Yehudit Hannah Cohn is a resident of Jerusalem. She came to Israel from the USA in 2000 for the WUJS-Arad arts program. While here, she acquired her love of cats: through them, she sees signs of God, and since then she has been photographing them. Through the camera she follows them, records their movements, their gaze, their location and thus she turns everything into one complete story. Looking at her photographs, it seems that she follows those signs and connects everything into one complete story that may even hint at her own personal world: a story of place, time, belonging and a feeling of home.