How Shnuki Became a House Cat

This is a story of an enlightened cat, though right now, we are just at the beginning of our tale. Though this cat wasn’t part of the original community of cats that I describe in my book ‘My Street Cats’, he was the son of one of the females in that community. His name is Shnuki.

Shnuki was born to a litter of four kittens, all of them colored black and white. When they first arrived, I thought a clan of Dalmatians had taken over the garden, for that is exactly how they appeared from afar. Shnuki was the weakest of the four, and yet so incredibly, overwhelmingly sweet. Like his siblings, he followed his mother’s lead and was absolutely terrified of me, running away the moment they saw me and vanishing in an instant.

All four kittens grew up in my garden, but like all previous litters that their mother had brought to me to feed, they were incredibly sickly. One after the other they caught a series of diseases, some of them quite serious.

Shnuki was no exception. He became so ill that we were forced to catch him, bring him to the vet, who then diagnosed an incurable eye infection and remove one of his eyes.  Shnuki couldn’t be kept at the vet’s clinic for long since he wouldn’t tolerate being in a cage, and so soon afterwards we released him back to his family. 

On the one hand, you see, Shnuki was a very frail cat, but on the other hand he was a cat who definitely knew his own mind.

Shnuki captured my heart when winter arrived. After the first rains, I went out to the garden with cat food. His brothers and all the other cats that I fed at the time quickly got up and came towards me. Shnuki didn’t move. I looked at him and saw that he was trying to get up and falling, trying and falling. I quickly divided the food between the other cats and put all the plates on the ground. I ran towards Shnuki and picked him up. He let me do that. He didn’t try to resist in any way; he just leaned into my hands.

I quickly brought him indoors and took out the emergency cat supplies that I’d kept in the basement for three years: a cat bed and a litter box. The box I immediately filled with the litter that I had bought for my pergola cats (more on them in ‘My Street Cats’) and the bed I put at the foot of the stairs, opposite the front door so that Shnuki would see that he could get out should he wish to do so. I placed Shnuki on the cat bed, and brought him cat food mixed with antibiotics. He ate it all, including the antibiotics. I placed a bowel of water near his bed and decided that I’d give him some space and see what would happen.

I went into the living room to watch the evening news. Halfway through the program I couldn’t take it anymore. I was curious and growing “curiouser and curiouser” by the minute. Since he hadn’t followed me into the living room, I assumed that Shnuki was in his bed.

I went over to the bed, but there was no Shnuki to be found. The bed was empty. This was the Shnuki couldn’t stand up just half an hour ago. Where could he have gone? I looked to the right. I looked to the left. But I forgot to look up. You see, I live in a three story cottage, so with a cat, one has to think three-dimensionally. Then it suddenly hit me: Shnuki must have gone up to the upper floor. 

I finally looked up and there he was, not on the top floor, mind you, but on the stairway landing between the floors.  He lay there, sound asleep, without a care in the world. I guess he realized that he was safe there, and that he could use it as an escape route should the need arise. I looked at his litter box and cried out in joy. He had both pooped and peed in there! And that is how Shnuki became a fixed feature in my house and in my heart.

From that moment on Shnuki became the child that I had never had. If that sounds a bit dramatic, so be it. He really was like an infant in his frailty and dependence on me. And that’s how I remember him to this day. But more on that to follow.

Relaxing together in the evening in our favorite armchair. It used to be mine, but now Shnuki lets me share it.

A Little about Myself and the Book

I thought I'd begin by saying a little bit about myself and about what led me to write 'My Street Cats'.

My name is Raphaella Bilski. I live in Jerusalem in a nice three story cottage in one of Jerusalem’s greener streets, which means that we have lots of tall green trees around. I have a PhD in political science from Glasgow University and a BA and an MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I taught political philosophy, both ancient and modern, at the Hebrew University for almost 35 years. 

After about 25 years, I was bored. Terribly bored. In addition, while studying John Stuart Mill’s book ‘On Liberty’ in my seminar Liberty and Equality, the students and I reached a chapter called ‘Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being.’ The students started asking question not about liberty, but about well-being and happiness. I had no answers to give them as I knew nothing about happiness. So I took a sabbatical and read everything possible on well-being and happiness, which unfortunately happened to be a hell of a lot of stuff. A year later I started giving a seminar called ‘Happiness’, which became the most popular seminar in my department.

You might ask, “What does all of this have to do with cats?” At first glance, nothing. At second glance, everything. Throughout my life, the two beings who brought me the greatest happiness happened to be two cats: Nonny (a hero in this book) and Shnuki (who lived and died after the book was written). 

In addition to my work in academia, I always had a part-time job to keep in touch with the real world. For many years, for example, I was an adviser on social policy to three of Israel’s Prime Ministers, including the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The only problem with this job was that the Prime Ministers took very little interest in social policy. The upside of this, however, was that I had more time to invest in promoting animal welfare, which was my real passion. In particular, I focused on caring for and studying the street cats that lived in my neighborhood in Jerusalem. 

My love of animals I learned from my mother who taught me to take care of street cats even as a young girl. The community of street cats started in my garden in 1993, two months after the death of my last dog, Kato. 

A wonderful and terrible Rottweiler, Kato was the terror of the neighborhood cats. He killed every cat that dared enter our garden. But in the end the cats had the final word. After Kato died the age of cats began in my garden, which I felt was a fitting feline revenge for Kato’s reign of terror.   

It’s important to emphasis that as a rule street cats do not form communities. Instead, they live as individuals within a specific territory that is occupied by other cats, but with little or no connection between individual cats except during mating season or in rare cases of feline friendship. What happened in my garden was unintentional. By starting a feeding station there, I inadvertently created a community of cats that spanned several generations in a time when spaying and neutering were uncommon in Israel. 

It all started because I was worried that the cats who came to eat in my garden would die of exposure in the cold Jerusalem winter. So I decided to set up about a dozen cat houses in my garden. The cats tried them out, loved them, and stayed in the garden, creating a true community of free-roaming individuals which lasted for several generations.

Fourteen years of feeding and caring for street cats have given me a rare and unique insight into their lives, their relationships with each other and with the human female who fed them. In one sense, then, this book is an ethological study presented in narrative rather than scientific form, and therein lies its uniqueness. While street cats can be seen in many cities around the world, lurking around trash cans and in back alleys, their world remains largely unknown. The book provides a rare look into the lives of these cats not only as individuals, each with his or her distinctive personality, but also as members of a community. As we read of the social life of street cats we encounter their hierarchies and the leaders among them, extraordinary displays of courage and friendship, different forms of motherhood, including joint motherhood, a compassionate attitude to the sick and the dying, cats teaching one another, and much more. No other book on cats offers such a long-term and in depth exploration of the lives of street cats in a communal context.

The book also examines the complex and problematic interplay between the world of the street cat and our own human world. People often see these cats as a nuisance, at best to be ignored. Through the years I have formed deep bonds with individual cats. In this book, I try to convey to the reader the special nature and depth of these relationships, showing that the street cat can be a warm and loyal friend if treated correctly. I hope that this intimate and emotional encounter with the street cat will transform it from an obscure animal, roaming around trash cans, into a familiar, interesting and sympathetic creature. 

And this is the main reason why I wrote this book. I wanted to share with others my love for the cats who came into my garden and the exceptional experiences I had over the years with them. But more than that, I want to help change people’s attitudes towards street cats, raising compassion for an animal that is either hated or overlooked. I hope that the book will give people the opportunity to connect with others who care for street cats, ask questions, share experiences, and so help raise awareness of the plight and beauty of these amazing animals who live all around us. 

Enjoy the book and let me know what you think! 

BTW: My companion in the picture above is Shnuki - an enlightened and beloved cat who started his life on the street and became a house cat. You'll read more about him in the stories to follow.

Available on Amazon.