Don't hurt cats
Photo: Michael Kremmer
Let cats live
A cruel neighbor brought me back to the bad old days when children hunted cats just for fun
I love cats. I grew up with them, and at any given time we had several in our house. Sometimes as many as three or four.
When my family made aliya back in the early 50s, we lived on Bar Kochba stret in Tel Aviv, we had four cats – a mother and her three kittens – and I slowly found "adoptive homes" for them.
This was a time when no one had a cat. At the outside, people may have had a pet dog, but a cat? Do me a favor! Such a traitorous animal as a pet?
Hunting cats for fun
It was a time when children chased and hurt cats just for fun. When the kids in the neighborhood figured out that I had a pet cat, they all wanted to come over to see the "cat that lives in a house like a person."
I let them play with the cats and explained to them that they shouldn't hurt them, and I'm happy to report that my pro-feline efforts paid off: The neighborhood children stopped chasing cats, and many even started to feed them. To this day I meet people who tell me they are the kids I once taught that cats have a right to live.
Unprecedented cruelty
Why do I tell this story now? I now live in an exclusive north Tel Aviv suburb. There are a lot of dogs around, and of course there are a lot of cats. Some are house pets, some live on the street. And, unfortunately, there are people around that chase them.
It's not just that they don't like cats, it's that they mercilessly try to cause them harm. Some systematically poison them, some hit them in other ways, and recently one person, a man with a posh apartment on Alexander Penn Street, set a new standard for cruelty: He hired an exterminator spray poison on two newborn kittens in a storeroom next to the building.
The mother cat and two neighbors tried to save the kittens, to no avail. They suffered terribly for two days until they died. And as if that was not enough, the man had the chutzpah to demand other tenants chip in to cover the 300 shekel cost for the exterminator!!
What for?
How cruel, how heartless must a man be to kill a cat. How cruel to have an exterminator cause such suffering. And what for? Do cats hurt the environment? Are they dangerous to people? Do they attack children and passersby, the way many dogs do? Do they foul up sidewalks and grassy areas, the way all dogs do? Has anyone ever seen a cat defecating in full public view?
Not only are cats intensely private about relieving themselves, they are also useful: They "defend" us against mice and snakes, for example.
If I'm not mistaken, there is a law against killing cats. It's too bad this law is not enforced more strongly. A person who could kill an animal simply because he doesn't like them could also be dangerous to human beings he doesn't like. For the same reason.
