Beginning Of The Stray Cat Love Story
As the story goes, which is probably actually true — before the State of Israel was formed, it was under rule by the British. The British had a significant rat problem, so they did what anyone else would do and imported by ship thousands of cats to catch them.
When the problem was eradicated, then they had another problem, and that was that they were overrun with street cats. Even today, if you come to Israel, you see that almost every building has probably 2 or 3 or even four cats in most built-up areas.
You can tell the difference between a street cat and a pet cat because pet cats have collars and are generally kept inside.
There is a cat lady or a cat man who has taken it upon themselves to look after the street cats in many buildings.
The problem is that many people hate street-cats because they can be noisy and hang around the trash area, causing rubbish to be strewn around.
For the street cats to survive, they need to be fed by the cat-people. Also, if they are injured, then they may need to be taken to the vet. We give the cats in our building our leftovers if we have chicken or meat. Some neighbors don’t appreciate that because they think it encourages the cats to hang around our building.
So, there are interesting dynamics in the forces pro and against the cats.
I grew up in the UK. There, almost all cats are house cats and are friendly. Here, you wouldn’t touch or stroke a street cat because you don’t know its history. They are also hunters, so they can be a bit violent if you try and be too friendly.
What does happen is that the cats sometimes get pregnant. And as you are aware, cats often have multiple births. As that is what led to the cat over-population in the first place, the cat-people take the cats to the vet to be fixed, and then their ears are clipped.
If cats do have babies, then the babies often die due to the harsh climates and the competition between the cats to have the food. If the mother doesn’t look after them for any reason, then they are left to die. It has happened to us before that we found a dead kitten in our garden that had been abandoned.