Eilat of Fun

This cat wasn't just cute-- she was pristine. She had golden brown hair and long whiskers. She stood at quite an impressive height and even purred beautifully. Also, she was begging me for food (and may not have been female; I didn't check). I was feasting on a pita filled with shwarma in a little, hole-in-the-wall, food establishment near my youth hostel in Eilat. Some of my Year Course friends and I had decided to go down to Eilat to spend the few days between our volunteering trimester in Bat Yam and our learning trimester in Jerusalem. Eilat is Israel's premier tourist city and is basically one huge resort.

            Now, the fact that this cat was so pretty and yet was begging me for food is an interesting dichotomy. But that was not what interested me. What I found surprising was simply that the cat was pretty. If you've been to Israel, then you know that stray cats here are like Walmarts in the United States: They're everywhere and they're ugly. The story goes that when the British ruled Palestine they were bothered by an overabundance of rats. They solved this problem by bringing in tons of cats. Fast-forward to today and Israel has tons and tons of stray cats, as a result.

            Most of these cats are diseased, dirty and resemble the rats they were intended to chase away. Especially in the less-than-wealthy neighborhood of Bat Yam, where we had been living for three months, the cats were a pity to look at. But there I stood, in Eilat, with this gorgeous cat staring up at me.

            What I'm trying to get at is that Eilat is different than the rest of Israel, in more ways than just their stray cat population. Their beaches were cleaner. The people were friendlier. The air even smelt better.

            This fact about Eilat, that it was kind of just nicer than other cities in Israel, was the overarching theme of our trip. We all implicitly understood it in all of our activities. We understood it when we were being dragged at rapid pace on an inflatable tube behind a motorboat, screaming at the top of our lungs. We understood it when we took a paddleboat out onto the Red Sea and wondered at the hills of Jordan before watching the sun set over Egypt. We understood it when we went snorkeling and saw dozens of gorgeous species of fish in the unbelievable coral reef. We understood it when we got dressed up in our Sunday's best (Shabbat's best, here in Israel) to go out for a fancy meal at a fancy restaurant, just to treat ourselves. We understood it when we lied on the beach, getting a tan at the end of November.

            We really understood the majestic nature of Eilat and I think that pristine cat did too.