To Margaret Atwood, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, T.S.
Elliott, Neil Gaiman, Doris Lessing, Rocky Murakami, Alice Walker and Jorge Luis Borges have very little in common from a literary point of view, but they all loved cats.
Love is perhaps even a very faint word for describing the mental connection each of these - and many other writers and creators - have had with the wild creatures impersonating a pampered pet, a connection that is expressed not only in intimate photographs of moments of peace and writing in the company of cats, but in the works themselves.
And now they are also joined by Zohar Kochavi, in his first book "Carthage", which is a kind of enlightened one dedicated to the years he spent in the company of one impressive cat, and the traces that this cat left in his soul.
"Carthage" is a collection of moments, memories and insights, arranged in an associative order.
After the Kaddish who opens the book and introduces us to old Kato, "he was 21 years old, lived on three continents, he was a magnificent cat and he died upright," Kochavi invites us to accompany him in his parting process from a creature who was a very significant friend to him. There was a cat.
"His outburst for life was focused and sweeping," he testifies, "and at another age could have been considered casual," because old Kato - so named when he was a tiny puppy, probably because Kochavi, as a doctor of philosophy, editor and translator, could not resist the feline sound in his name. The third-century BCE Roman statesman accompanied him between the 1920s and 1940s, years in which his emotional ground was probably ripe for developing what was clear from the first moment that it was a love story.
The name of the book, "Carthage," is taken from the sentence that the Roman Cato used to sign every speech of his, "besides that I think Carthage should be destroyed," so that even before reading it is clear that this is not a collection of amusing anecdotes from the life of a cat breeder.
Kochavi writes out of admiration for the direct and intense communication with a living creature that is so different from him, a creature that has strong desires and clear demands, and yet he chooses to concede to the needs and desires of the person with whom he lives.
'As I sat next to old Kato, I stroked him and looked at him.
I used to say to myself: You are in a relationship with another way of life.
On the one hand, we have completely different needs, but on the other hand - in the basic things we are similar, we want the same things. "
And on these things Kochavi writes: attention, warmth, closeness, understanding, misunderstanding, and even quarrels.
He is aware that for many the human-animal connection is trivial, but he never ceases to be amazed, and this wonder gives his writing great power.
Kochavi shares with his readers the details of life alongside old Kato, details that cat lovers are probably familiar with from their routine: the daily treatment, the smell of fur after intense licking, rituals of petting and play, falling asleep next to a warm lump of fur, and this combination of aggression and elegance, senses Pointed and devoted to homeliness, which turned Kato, as the stars attest, into a tiger and then a short and dense lion and towards his last days into cheetahs - because of the thinness and prominent bones and gait that emphasizes the skeleton.
But beyond all these subtle and precise distinctions, Kochavi uses his memories of the big black cat as a mirror, in which his own character is reflected on the changes that have taken place in her, externally and internally, in these 21 years.
At the beginning of the book appears the single line that is certainly appropriate to also be his final conclusion: "Finally, tenderness is the only possibility."
And the tenderness appears in "Carthage" in expected places: "On the figure there are moments of life woven from spider webs. The way Kato reacted to my movements testified that he deciphered them. He understood whether I was going to hug him, kiss him or just change the sitting angle ..." Surprising: "On hot days I broke into him by wetting his face, mane and sometimes also his waist. Kato was surprised, but after a quick calculation he cooperated. I noticed that he wanted to resist but could not find what ..." Like people who have a small heart attack and do not feel or know ... "
Although "Carthage" also has stories from the life of Kato the puppy, it is a book about parting, much of which is devoted to the cat's physical withering.
Kochavi tries to settle a storm of conflicting emotions: on the one hand the desire to let go and on the other the need to deepen memories, and as philosophers do he tells a story while looking at it from the side, trying to gauge its impact on others.
He is not afraid to admit that he sees the astonishment in the eyes of those who believe that his relationship with cats is meant to fill the place of the children he did not give birth to, but do not understand the intensity of his grief;
And he admits that the pain of parting from a near-dead creature is immense, but there is also in it from liberation.
More than any other "cat book," Kochavi's delicate and beautiful writing reminded me of Andy Warhol's "25 Cats Named Sam."
Warhol painted his cat in different colors and situations from a sharp and distinctive look.
Kochavi does this in words that will touch anyone who has ever parted from a relationship - human, feline or in general.
Zohar Kochavi / Carthage, New World, 108 pages
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