Want a Holy land Cat? The Cat Woman of Jerusalem will send you one, healthy, neutered and English speaking, if you or a friend can escort this cat from Israel.

Tahlia David (not her real name lest more baskets filled with kitties end up on her doorstep) may not have planned this to be her life's work but how she got there, and how her cats became international travellers, makes sense, sort of.

David is an American young woman, a social worker, who started around the world, wound up in Israel, where she became a licensed nature tour guide. Not the historical sites, but the desert and the golden hills. She wanted to share her love and knowledge for the outdoors. And a cat rescuer mother in Pittsburgh had brought her up.        

Blackie became part of her family when her mother found a kitten on whose back someone had painted a white stripe as a joke. Mother had no idea of how to help the cat, so she hurried to a vet who shaved off the painted, stuck fur. Mother than paid the bill, adopted the cat, and the family learned to care for Blackie. David says “that makes a big impression on a kid".

Now her interest in the environment makes her adventure tours part of her love for the outdoors. She tells of driving alone near the Jordan River, admiring the lushness of the countryside, when she realized there was a beautiful bird entangled in a fishpond net. Her car keys weren't sharp enough to release the knot, but her manicure scissors worked. David drove to the nearby kibbutz, asking if there was a bird expert anywhere. After back and forth calls (to a birdman in the Tel Aviv zoo) the bird was placed in a box, with sugar water, to rest and recuperate. But David met a South American bird-watching couple that took her back to the fishponds and showed her the different species they had spotted.

But in the grand international stew that is Jerusalem, finding homes for cats is complicated. And she makes sure each of her recovered cats goes to a welcoming home. So, maximizing her contacts with Americans and tourists, David began sending her cats to other countries. Sometimes a cat will go home with a new family, but upon occasion the cat merely needs an escort to a new city, there to be turned over to a home which appreciates a cat which walked where Jesus walked, where the kings and prophets spoke. 

A German couple, total tourists who engaged in deep philosophic discussions after visiting Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Memorial) said to her "After seeing Yad Vashem, I don't understand how any Jew can be nice to any German, but everyone has been so nice to us here".  They took a healthy alley cat home with them to Hamburg. Cheerfully, in their thank you note they said the cat had not been put in cargo on the flight home, but secure in first class. And the flight attendant invited them into first class twice so they could be reassured their new cat was well cared for.

Sometimes David posts an ad in the local paper. A mother with two little girls came over to possibly select a cat. They seemed unimpressed, because all the kittens were hiding. As they were leaving, without a cat, David said the little all-black kittie would probably grow up to look like "Bagheera" the Black Panther in the Jungle Book. The mother happily took the kitten, later reported the name stuck.

While posting a " Holy land Cat" sign (in German) in the Arab market, the shopkeeper hailed her, saying "There's a cat here that really needs your help. Its eye is very, very bad." Over in the corner was a small tortoise-shell cat, its eye bulging from the socket. David went home to get a carrier and gloves, lest she be bitten. But this cat was so weak, cold, and badly beaten that she didn't resist being put in the carrier. David continues "I took her to the vet, who noticed the caked blood, the injured pelvis and mumbled whether it wasn't more merciful to just put her to sleep. I said let's give it a go for a day or two. He said she was too weak to operate on removing the hideous eye; she needed antibiotics and time to heal. Finally, the wretched eye was removed and sewn shut. Her pelvis mended" David says the cat did hide in a rolled up rug for a while, until her self-esteem was restored. But, while waiting to be spayed, this newly powerful cat began nursing all the assorted kittens in the room, even carrying them  from possible interlopers. Recovered, this cat now lives with friends in Los Angeles.

Sometimes, a sick cat just appears, needing help. On a one-day outing with a group of four, a little Arab boy appeared, carrying a newborn in a box. David had no bottle or formula, had to keep the kitten with her party for hours. On the 3-hour drive back to the city, David held the wailing kitten in her hair. She laughs that she now suffers from, "kitten-scream-prevention-elbow".

David counts on supports from friends for cat food, friendly vets who do medical treatment pro bono, she does advertise locally, and she leans on those friendly escorts to foreign countries to be sure each cat has a place to go. Her airline connections mean she can get free service to Holland and Germany, costs to the U.S. used to be nominal. David confides she has three cats living in Dallas, that her friend Lily once made a trip to Los Angeles with five cats, including the one-eyed one. David brought eight bespoke kittens along on a recent trip to visit her mother in Pittsburgh.

Those Holy Land cats are world travellers.