Holy Cats! Jerusalem's Strays and Their Unsung Guardian
March 16, 2017 - Stray
cats are found everywhere in the Old City of Jerusalem. Their overpopulation threatens the well-being of these felines, leaving them susceptible to disease, neglect and starvation. However, one resident has made it her mission to look after Jerusalem's strays and to give them the best life possible. Tova Saul has devoted an enormous amount of time and money to feed and rescue stray cats. In 2016 alone, she spent close to $15,000 USD to trap, spay, and release 76 cats, rescue and place 48 kittens in homes, and provide medical care for 28 sick cats and kittens. As an observant Jew and animal lover, she is driven by a duty to stop the suffering of all animals, a concept she feels is not entirely observed by others of her faith. Follow Saul as she ventures throughout the city, including Jewish and Muslim neighborhoods, to feed cats and trap them for spaying and to educate curious onlookers of all religions.
Learn more about Tova Saul's work in Jerusalem.Read the article, "Vasectomies Could Cut Feral Cat Population."
TOVA SAUL, TOUR GUIDE AND VOLUNTEER ANIMAL RESCUER:
It’s so sad to see kittens suffering and dying in the streets that I cannot stand it. It will affect my mental health.
I can’t pass by a kitten on the street and not rescue it because I know it’s gonna have a horrible life until it dies.
Holy Land cats that walked in the footsteps of the kings and prophets of Israel! It’s a bit of surprise for everyone who comes here. First they’ll see one cat and they’ll say, “Oh look, a cat!” And then they start seeing a whole lot more cats, like not a normal number and until a lot of people realize that there are a huge number of stray cats. Not just in Israel but the entire Mediterranean basin where it’s warm weather and the winters are very mild.
I never leave the house without a large bag of cat food in my pack. I make a certain sound to call them for food so they associate the sound that I make and me with food and they come running.
[SAUL MAKING SOUND TO ATTRACT CATS]
And they recognize me when I call them.
I try to keep a very low profile. A lot of my neighbors really don’t get animals at all. They attitude in Jerusalem towards stray cats in general, I would say that the non-religious, Western Jews are the most involved in animal welfare issues. And I’m a religious Jew. I became religious as an adult. And I have tremendous respect for each group, but the more religious a group is it turns out they have the least experience with animals. And there tends to be fear of them so they’re not involved with them.
[MUSLIM CALL TO PRAYER ON LOUDSPEAKER]
[SAUL MAKING SOUND TO ATTRACT CATS]
SOT: Will you let me pet you? What’s in there? Are you nice? Oh, you’re very nice.
I have ran into some people in the middle of the night, like in the Muslim quarters and the Christian quarters, resident Arabs in the Old City. And some of them are curious. They ask me what I’m doing and I explain to them. And you see the wheels turning in their head and they start to smile and they nod their head. And then they say, “Good for you.”
[SAUL AND PASSERBY HAVING CONVERSATION IN ARABIC]
My home is a revolving door. I can’t pass up any kitten on the street cause I know it’s just having a horrible, horrible time. And they all come from different places, different stories.
SOT: You’re delicious!
This is Grace. Grace was almost dead when I found her in the Christian Quarter, very close to the Church of the Holy Sepulture.
SOT: Hi Nora!
Nora is the sweetest. She has a neurological problem that’s permanent. When she was tiny kitten, something hit her in the head. I don’t know what but that’s what the doctor said. She still falls over a lot but she’s a very happy cat.
The classic problem is that there’s a lot people who are putting a lot of food for a lot of cats, but they’re not spaying them. So they wander off, they get hurt, they starve, they die of disease. There’s only a limit to the amount of food available for these street cats. People think, “Oh, they’ll manage. There’s plenty of food garbage.” Well, there isn’t. If you check any garbage can, more often than not there’s nothing for a cat to eat in there.
NECHAMA LEVY, VETERINARIAN, JSPCA:
We try to do the best for them here, where overcrowding is very, very unhealthy. Physically and emotionally for the cats very stressful. But if there’s one message I could give to people is spay and neuter your cats. Spay and neuter cats in the street.
TOVA SAUL, TOUR GUIDE AND VOLUNTEER ANIMAL RESCUER:
Since the year 2009 when I started keeping count, I’ve been prowling the streets of the Old City late at night schlepping big traps. It’s just an enormous amount of work. It sort of means being always on-call. Like you could just get cozy in bed and just unplug, and the phone will ring and it will be someone saying that there’s a sick cat in the Muslim Quarter, come and get it. And, all it takes is few cats to reverse all the work you have done. A few cats having kittens and then them having kittens.
There was a rabbi who lived about a hundred years ago in Germany named Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. And he said that it’s not enough to not cause pain to animals. That if you see an animal suffering, even if it’s not your own and even if you didn’t cause it suffering, it’s up to you to do something to rescue it.
