Fine Felines For Free 

Here are 2 felines that need to find good homes.  The black one is already

neutered and vaccinated.  Interested people should call me in Jerusalem at:

050 761 2109        I will bring them to anywhere in the country.

A Surprising Kitten Adoption

 2 weeks ago I found a kitten crying in the Christian Quarter.  I had him for 2 weeks, and named him "Cubby".

One late afternoon last week, I was walking to the Jewish Quarter parking lot to do the daily feeding of about 12 cats there, with a 2 week old kitten folded in my sweatshirt. This is what he looks like (click on the video):

 The thought crossed my mind how no one would ever know I was carrying a tiny animal on me.  Just then, a passing Armenian lady stopped and asked if I was holding a baby animal.   I showed her, and she lit up, saying she wanted to ask her kids if they wanted it.  I asked if she ever had a cat before, and she said she had a cat for 18 years.  I said that this kitten was too young right now, but that I had a bigger kitten at home.  Would she like to see it?  "OK".  So I ran around the corner and got Cubby, and took him to the doorway of their old Armenian house.  They (the lady, her adopted niece, and the niece's 2 little girls-----Emily and Tatiana) took him eagerly.  I asked, "Do you have any food for him now?" 
 "No".
  I ran back to my place, and brought canned food, dry food, and clumping sand.  They invited me into their enviably tidy, clean home, and took me to the back room, where the bedridden grandmother was cuddling Cubby on the blanket.  I said, "I have to go get a camera -----This is going on my blog."  So I ran home a third time for the camera.

Upon returning, I was informed that his name would be :"Musky"  I said, "Oh, that's a fine name.  Why 'Musky'"? 

 "It's a kind of dog from Alaska." 

 "Oh, that's 'Husky'". 

 "Oh, yes, that's right".

"But 'Musky' is nice, too.  It's a nice smell."
A nice neighbor then appeared, announcing that she would like to adopt the tiny kitten at the end of April, when he's old enough.


They showed me a photo of an elegant man holding a cigarette-----the late husband of the now invalid grandmother.  They met when he came for a visit from Egypt for a cousin's wedding.  Like many men, he barged into a room without knocking, and there was his other cousin----now the grandmother----in the middle of getting dressed for the wedding.  She complained to her family about this jerk who burst in on her without knocking.  Meanwhile, he was telling his family that he will never marry anyone but her.


We all agreed that he looked like Clark Gable.


Here is Cubby (Husky) in his adoption ad, followed by him snuggling with his adoptive family:

Then the lady invited me into her living-room, saying that the couch and many upholstered chairs along the 4 walls were 80 and 100 years old, and started regaling me with stories about how previous generations of her family were connected to famous people in Israeli history.  For example, her father had gone to the same school as one of the Prime Ministers, Yitzchak Navon.  When Jerusalem was reunited after 19 years in 1967, Yitzchak Navon quickly came to Jaffe Gate and asked around to find his old boyhood friend from the Armenian Quarter.  Her grandmother knew 7 languages (including English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Arabic), and so was the translator for Glubb Pasha when he was here before the 1948 War of Independence.

Greeting the Swifts, March 12, 2012
The 4th Annual Commemoration of Their Return
Written by Tova Saul

Jeremiah 8:7  "Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the crane observe the time of their migration. But my people do not know the requirements of the Lord."

   

      This evening (March 12, 2012) no less than the mayor of Jerusalem greeted nearly 90 pairs of a small species of bird who have just finished their yearly journey from South Africa to return to their nesting crevices in the Western Wall.  Here, from mid-February till June, at twilight, small black winged silhouettes speedily and gracefully wheel and swoop overhead with high pitched cries.

     The life cycle of a swift, which lives to be about 10 years old, can exhaust you, just thinking about it. The fledglings “work out” in the nest, doing push ups with their wings.  They need to strengthen their muscles, because after 42 days, they fly from the nest, and only stop flying after 3 years, when they build their own first nest.  They eat, drink, sleep, and mate while flying.   (After the ceremony, I asked Dr.Yossi Leshem ------Israel's most famous ornithologist and Director of The International Center for the Study of Bird Migration----how they don’t crash into things while they sleep, and he answered that they fly very high while sleeping.  But now as I write this, I wonder---If they are sleeping, how do they know to stay up so high and not crash into things?  I also wonder why they evolved in such an energy-intensive way, when it seems that other animals have evolved ways to conserve their energy.

   The parent birds feed their young by catching insects throughout the day, storing about 2000 insects in their crops ( pocket in the throat that birds have),  forming a “bolus” (a small package), and feeding it to each chick twice a day.

      A swift cannot stand on its legs, or take off to fly if it's on the ground.  It must be at least a few feet high, clasping a vertical surface, in order to let itself drop and swoop away.  A year ago, a neighbor emailed me an hour before Shabbat, saying a bird was sitting by their front door.  I told them to bring it to me.
It was a swift.  I googled "Yossi Leshem" and----- to my surprise----- he answered the phone, and told me to take it to the Jerusalem zoo.  (The taxi was 100 shekels, for which the family declined to reimburse me.)  Shortly afterward, one of the fantastic staff of the Jerusalem Bird Observatory (Alen) informed me that the bird was probably fine, and simply needed to be held a meter off the ground so it could fly away.

Schoolchildren and adults attending ceremony

First our mayor spoke:

Mayor Nir Barkat

He said that just as the swifts always return to their nests at the Kotel, the Jewish people have always returned to the Kotel, to Jerusalem, and to
the Land of Israel, and that Israel is the nest of the Jewish people..

Mayor Nir Barkat

     And then other VIP's spoke, such as a rabbi of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, Naomi Tzur of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, and Yossi Leshem, himself.

   He explained the life cycle of the swift, and mentioned how their numbers are decreasing drastically across their range (40% less in London, for example), due to destruction of old buildings that have nooks and crannies for their nests, and replacing them with modern buildings.  Various cities, such as London and Tel Aviv, are building nesting boxes for them to increase their numbers.  One school project in Tel Aviv has built 30 nesting boxes on their school building.

Dr. Leshem would like to reach more people from a spiritual angle to be interested in birds, and nature in general.  He wants to introduce Jewish, Christian, and Muslim leadership to their own many religious values concerning wildlife conservation.  He mentions that there are also swifts in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity and also in many old mosques.  He plans to persuade 20 Israeli mayors to implement bird conservation policies in their cities.

Dr. Leshem also explained to a Russian news team how Israeli farmers and scientists have worked together with their counterparts in Jordan and Arabs in the West Bank to build thousands of nesting boxes for barn owls and kestrels in crop fields to control the rodent populations, eliminating the need to spread tons of poisons.

Yossi Leshem interviewed by Russian news team

Here are my 2 attempts to capture the swifts' flights and cries on video this evening:

Just for fun, I took a look at some of the rabbinical commentaries on Jeremiah 8:7, quoted above.  Some say that the stork, swift, crane, and dove, who don't have the capacity that humans have for advanced thought------even they do the will of God by going where they need to go and doing what they are supposed to do.  Furthermore, birds understand that they need to behave in certain ways to avoid harsh consequences-----being somewhere with scarce food, and to behave in ways that will bring them to better conditions------availability of food in a warmer climate.  Humans, commentators continue, who have the benefit of advanced reasoning, the guidance of Torah, and the hindsight of the deeds of their ancestors, should be able to do a better job than they do at living according to Godly laws and values.

My own 2 cents say the opposite:  Animals are pre-programmed to do what they were created to do.  Humans, created with free will, have a much tougher job figuring it out and an even tougher job sticking to it.

At any rate, the swifts are back for a short while.  May they live long and prosper.

      


Animal Therapy at St. Louis Hospice near Jerusalem's Old City




 This short video is about using animals to cheer people up in a hospice which is a 10 minute walk from where I live.   

         Once a week, I visit Marcie, who is in part of the video (towards the end).  6 years ago, she suddenly had a brain hemorrhage that left her very disabled, although her mind is totally intact.  Once in awhile, I bring her kittens, if I have any.  Once, a tiny kitten         

snuggled and curled up by her neck, covering half of her trach tube.  I asked if it was bothering her breathing, and she shook her head no.  Anyway, I spend at least an hour a week there.  Usually, we watch Modern Family on her laptop.      

            Every Thursday at 1 PM, Marcie hosts the "Happiness Club", during which women friends can show up and read and discuss together passages from Rabbi Pliskin's "Gateway to Happiness" at Marcie's bedside.                          

      


       

Israel for Animal Lovers

By Abigail Klein Leichman

(Reprinted from The New Jersey Jewish Standard)

Tova Saul moved to Israel from Pittsburgh in 1981 to find the man of her dreams. That quest is still pending. Along the way, however, she found a niche as a tour guide, and also as an animal advocate and rescuer.

Now she is combining her vocation and avocation by offering the first-ever animal-focused tour of Israel: Israel Unleashed (www.israelunleashed.yolasite.com).

The June 3–13 tour will take a maximum of 14 participants to see living examples of positive interactions between humans and animals in the Holy Land. Among the planned stops are:

• the Israel National Therapeutic Riding Association (www.intra.org.il);

• the Israel Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center at Michmoret Naval Academy;

• an animal-assisted therapy program in Tel Aviv that pairs African refugee children with rescued dogs;

• a free veterinary clinic for working horses and donkeys in the northern West Bank;

• the Moshav Gan Yoshia donkey and horse rescue center;

• the Jerusalem Bird Observatory conservation and education center;

• Afrikef monkeys rescue and rehab center;

• bird-watching at Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin with ornithologist David Glasner;

• Neot Kedumim, Israel’s biblical landscape reserve.

“People who love animals share a language of animal-related opinions, experiences, and feelings,” Saul says. “This deeply connects them across differences in politics, religions, personalities, and ages, so they can be a happy cohesive group as they experience Israel together.”

Participants will meet a Knesset champion of animal-welfare legislation, and Dr. William Clark of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, whom Saul calls “the king of wildlife conservation.” (Clark spent 30 years engaged in national and international wildlife law-enforcement efforts, including the Interpol Wildlife Crime Group.) At Zichron Ya’akov, the tourists will have dinner at a winery with a spokesperson from Israel’s Let Animals Live organization.

“I spent two weeks perfecting the itinerary for a balance between animal projects that are uplifting; evening activities with animal people; and upbeat Jewish experiences like a fun Shabbaton and walking tour in the Old City — along with the standard sites to make it a real Israel trip, such as Tzfat, the Dead Sea, Masada, Caesarea, and the Golan Heights,” says Saul.

In the course of exploring the “standard sites,” the group is sure to see a standard sight: stray cats. Saul is an expert in this field, as well, as she just recently released the 165th cat she arranged to have spayed or neutered in Jerusalem’s Old City in the past three years. You can easily identify fixed cats in Israel by looking for one clipped ear.

“Tourists should know that’s what a tipped ear means,” says Saul, who financed the first 60 or so cats at her own expense before private donors, Spay Israel, and the city pound stepped in to help.

The tour will not dwell on this aspect, however. “I want to keep it upbeat, and that’s why we’re not going to an animal shelter,” Saul says. “You can go to a shelter in the U.S. and get depressed there.”

Saul says that non-Jews are welcome to join the tour, “providing they understand there will be Jewish elements that will be fun, such as a Sabbath meal with a family, a Jewish wedding, and a talk with an expert on Jewish dating and marriage.” One of the evening sessions will be a discussion with Rabbi Adam Frank about what Judaism has to say about the treatment of animals (quite a lot, actually).

While Saul is in charge of the itinerary and the guiding, Keshet Center for Educational Tourism in Israel has partnered with her to handle the logistics. Tour participants will stay at hotels and kibbutz guest houses during the trip.

Saul is not specifying a minimum or maximum age for the trip. “It’s fine for anyone who is physically fit — not Sylvester Stallone, but enough to do some hiking,” she says. Hezekiah’s Tunnel, the Old City ramparts, and Ein Gedi Nature Reserve are among the itinerary items where walking and climbing ability will come in handy, plus there will be rafting on the Jordan River.

As a licensed tour guide living in the Old City, Saul has had occasion to guide a wide range of guests, including the actor Kirk Douglas, who endowed several institutions there. She is probably best known in the cobblestone alleys, however, for her animal rescue work. It all began with a crying kitten she came upon not long after her arrival.

“I stood there wondering if it would survive,” she recalls. “I decided to take it, and I walked through the Old City knocking on doors until I found it a home. Every time I saw an injured cat after that, I had to do something.”

“My parents always let me bring home stray animals,” she says. “I’ve been told that when I was two years old, I ran away from home and was found by passersby at a junkyard, who took me home. My mother asked where I was going, and I said ‘Mike,’ which was the name of the dog of the neighbors up the street.”

For more information on Israel Unleashed, contact Tova Saul at (972) 2 671-3518 or IsraelUnleashed@gmail.com.

A Donkey and Horse Safe Haven in Israel

By Tova Saul


(Reprinted from the JointMedia News Service)

In the Bible, donkeys and mules are ridden by kings, prophets, and judges, used as metaphors for either humble or wild people, and have specific laws pertaining to their care. Today, thousands of equines (donkeys, mules, and horses), mostly with Arab owners, are used in Israel and the Palestinian territories to transport their masters, carry produce from the fields and to market, and for recreational riding.

Until recently most of these animals faced great harm and, for varying reasons, never received professional veterinary care. Often the owners increased their animal’s suffering by using “folk medicine,” which includes burning or cutting areas of the body. Many equines were abandoned, overworked, deliberately harmed, or injured in traffic accidents. Suffering in silence, they had no organization to rescue them.

That is, not until 2000, when Lucy Fensom, a soft-spoken British airline stewardess, became a savior for these animals. While volunteering at a Jerusalem animal shelter, she learned of the extensive abuse of equines in the region. She used her contacts in England to fund a donkey sanctuary called “Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land” (SHADH) in a rural area in central Israel. There are presently 160 donkeys and several horses in her custody, with SHADH treating donkeys in Arab villages in Israel as well as in the West Bank.

A year ago, I arrived at SHADH to see a dark skeletal horse being bathed by the staff. Fensom’s husband Adi explained that it had just been rescued from the “Jericho Equestrian Club.” Originally established by Yasser Arafat, the Club has been in decline for lack of funding since his death. A French diplomat who had ridden this horse in the past was shocked to see its condition, and he called Fensom directly. Although Jericho is off-limits to Israeli citizens, Fensom and her team were able to go to the Club, rescue two horses, and send bales of hay for the rest.

At SHADH, donkeys are recovering from varying forms of abuse. Torture by burning is common. One donkey was used as an anti-Israel billboard, a large Star of David carved into its hindquarters.

Fensom’s original concept was to rescue donkeys in bad situations and let them enjoy their lives at the spacious sanctuary. However, over the past 12 years, SHADH has morphed into shining fingers of compassion reaching far beyond the grounds of the sanctuary.

Four “rest stations” have been established next to the towns of Kalkilya, Tulkarem, Bethlehem, and Taibe, all located in the West Bank. Each station has free food and water for any passing equine, usually an over-worked, under-fed horse or donkey pulling a cart. At Kalkilya, SHADH provides two veterinarians, Jewish and Muslim, who share their caseload every day. (I was told that the Jewish vet is sought out more, due to his Western-style education.) A constant stream of horses and donkeys is brought to this free clinic, which serves 80 to 100 animals per day, thousands per year.

On a recent visit to the Kalkilya clinic, the place was abuzz. A Jewish vet and an intern in green scrubs were examining a thin and limping grey horse. The vet spoke in Hebrew to Abu Jad, whose job is to translate from the vet’s Hebrew to Arabic for the patients’ owners, and to supervise the rest stations. There were another five Arabs present, besides the owner, who were watching and listening with utmost fascination as the vet gently urged the owner to feed the horse more. All the while the owner nodded his head as Abu Jad translated.

SHADH is ever expanding its ambitious activities, trying to bring about a quiet revolution in the attitudes and behaviors of people towards their animals, and it is slowly accomplishing its goals.

Last year it held a free two-day farrier (blacksmith) course to teach 17 farriers and farmers in Tulkarem about proper shoeing and foot care. Word quickly spread to nearby Nablus, where so many people clamored for the course that another was given for 18 farriers there.

The northern West Bank is too large for most equine owners to bring their animals to the Kalkilya vet clinic. SHADH therefore offers a roving mobile clinic that carries a vet, a farrier, and basic medicine and equipment several times a week. This is virtually the only professional veterinary care for equines in the northern West Bank, and certainly the only free care.

Fensom travels to England several times a year for fund-raising events. Celebrities such as Des Lynam and Uri Geller have lent their support, and recently Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandra of Ogilvy has become a patron.

“We hope very much to extend our work within the Palestinian sector—both to help the animals and work at trying to change people's attitudes towards their animals,” Fensom told JointMedia News Service. “It can be done but it takes immense effort and infinite patience.

The writer is a licensed Israel tour guide and stray animal rescuer who will be leading a 10-day tour to Israel for animal-lovers this June 2012. For more information, see www.israelunleashed.yolasite.com.

To make a donation to Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land, please refer to www.safehaven4donkeys.org. 

* * *

The Book of Zecharia in the Bible envisions the arrival of the Messiah riding humbly on a donkey: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king comes to you. He is just and victorious, humble, and riding upon a donkey, upon a colt, the foal of an ass."

From that time on, all people will treat their donkeys, and each other, perfectly well.

* * *

Final notes:

SHADH runs a program called "Little Miracles," which brings groups of Arab schoolchildren to the sanctuary and teaches them hands-on animal care and compassion.

In addition to needing funding for the care of the equines at the sanctuary and for vet costs, SHADH dreams of buying the sanctuary property they are renting.