Cats in the holyland

For some reason, there seems to be lots of stray cats here, saw plenty of them on previous trips here, in the city walls of old Jerusalem, around one of the Roman amphitheatres on the Mediterranean and in a museum near Masada.

Stray cats can serve purposes, to get rid of rats and mice, but often they don’t bother as there are ready stocked dustbins or generous human neighbours around, There’s at least 15 cats in a hundred metre radius of my house, most of them sit in a garden two houses away which seems to have loads of rubbish (and really stinks, as do our drains and rubbish bins with the heat we have) and appears empty. Some of the kittens appear ridiculously cute, the little tiny black one that’s often asleep by my front door appears to have a nasty eye infection. Most of them look a mixture of ginger, tiger stripes and black. I don’t think anyone bothers to get their animals neutered or spayed.

Try and pet one of the adult moggies and you will get a nasty scowl and a paw swiped at you. I dont know if this country has a rabies or other nasty diseases but I think large numbers of feral animals can be a problem and really numbers probably need to controlled a bit, just as national parks in the UK, have to cull excess numbers of horses and deer.

Now, as domestic cats are widely thought to originate from Egypt, I wonder if Moses brought some over to here at some point….

will get back to some more articles soon….