The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

If you know me you know I have a near pathological hatred of cats. It’s only since I came to Israel. In the UK cats are clean domesticated pets, but here they are anything but clean and domesticated and it baffles me how people can keep them as pets.

In my quest to prevent cats from using my garden as a breeding ground and toilet I have employed many methods from spraying pepper and lemon juice, using the garden hose (still the best method), and using electronic sensors that blow their eardrums inside out.

For a long time the cats stayed away, in fact it was almost a year until the new cats unwittingly encroached on my garden. It seems the cats come in waves. Every winter there is a mini cull and new cats come to take up arms.

So this year, after surfing the internet extensively and using just about every combination of the words cat, garden, eliminate, prevention, painless (actually that was a lie but I don’t want to offend animal lovers), repellent, safe (another lie) and pest, I found the perfect solution – lion poo!

Well it looked like the Lion of Zion was going to be my favorite. Used all over the world it is the perfect substance to scare animals off. One whiff of a predators scent and they’d never come back.

I saw the advert on the internet clicked and looked for a way to get a bag sent to Bet Shemesh. The instructions read that for orders outside of the US special permission had to be received from the Ministry of Agriculture or equivalent ministry in your country. Then a customs form had to be filled out in detail with a million and one check boxes with statements such as; I will not use lion poo as a food additive, I will not mix lion poo with any other substance and the best one, I will not substitute human feces if I intend on reselling the lion poo.

So I phoned the Ministry of Agriculture and explained what I wanted to do. The women on the other end was most unpleasant, cackled on about me being a lunatic and slammed the phone down on me. What a witch, I thought. Admittedly my Ivrit may not have fully explained my intentions correctly. I was subsequently told that I was lucky not to have been arrested after what I said, which, incidentally, will remain my secret.

Then I had a brainwave and after a brief rest I phoned Jerusalems Biblical Zoo and explained what I wanted. Apparently I was one of over 50 people all requesting lion poo since Pesach. Apparently the secret of lion poo was out the closet. Now there’s a business. My mind started ticking over. Three lions, three times three poos a day, must be a few kilos, dried and bagged, minus labeling and distribution, the letters TASE came to mind.

Unfortunately, for me and all my fellow lion poo seekers the zoo weren’t prepared to cooperate even after I explained the economics.

Despondent I returned home and readied the hose just in case. Then a gardener friend of mine happened to mention in passing that he had a mate who works in the zoo and might be able squeeze them, so to speak, for some lion poo if I really wanted it.

So now I have set everything in motion.