Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cat

They cut off my tail in a cat circumcision ceremony, and then a Satanic cult burned me which is why I'm black, and then I was saved from being roasted by a Thai worker only to be wounded by a Palestinian worker, who stabbed me as a Jewish cat and then I started writing from the wound, and that's how I discovered that I'm actually a female cat who was raped, and I'm writing from the hole of the black circle

From Bad to Worse  (Source)

I dreamed I was a cat wanting to be part of the world. And all the people on the street hear my howls, but no one listens. The world doesn't believe a cat could have anything to say to the world. And if I see a computer in a coffee shop, I jump on it and try to write with my paws, but they immediately shoo me away, and hurry to erase what I typed. The world doesn't need another cat trying to write. And if I send something to a newspaper under a human pseudonym - then it seems to them a transparent impersonation of a cat, and exploitation of authentic feline suffering, and the world never lacks howls about imagined injustices. They want to hear that they cut off my tail in a cat circumcision ceremony, and then a Satanic cult burned me which is why I'm black, and then I was saved from being roasted by a Thai worker only to be wounded by a Palestinian worker, who stabbed me as a Jewish cat and then I started writing from the wound, and that's how I discovered that I'm actually a female cat who was raped, and I'm writing from the hole of the black circle.

And so every letter I send to the world is thrown in the trash, and thus returns to me, and I send it back up, and it's thrown again, and returns again, until finally one editor takes pity on me and gives me a tip: write about what you know. Write about what they think cats understand - and then you'll be considered a successful writer: monologues from the trash. Write about life on the street, about deteriorating to the bottom of the bottom, about a slow and romantic sinking into the belly of the frog [Translator's note: Hebrew idiom meaning "rock bottom"]. If you write about the sidewalk - you'll gain a reputation as a real writer. And I start a column with him about all kinds of intrigues in the garbage, as he likes. And I write the first column about a scratched and beaten cat found in our trash can, who never retaliates and therefore everyone abuses him, and they call him Jesus the cat.

And I interview Jesus, a cat with one and a quarter cheeks and a quarter tail, everyone's punching bag who suffers like ten cats, and I ask him with bold defiance, as our readers like: Tell me, why do Christians hate Jews? Why are you violent against us? What's the reason for antisemitism? And the wheezing Jesus says to me: Let me tell you the source of antisemitism. Jesus was the resistance to power. That was his essence, his message to the world. And his tragedy was, and this is forgotten - that power won, as always. But then, then something special happened in history, which actually created Christianity. Power indeed won, and in any other case that would have been the end of the matter and you would never have heard of Jesus in your life. But then, and this was the miracle of resurrection, there was a return through the spirit, through faith, against the Roman Empire which was the most powerful force ever in the world, and in the end, surprisingly, amazingly, unprecedentedly - the spirit defeats power. The Romans who crucified me - convert to Christianity. But then, in tremendous irony and in the final account, the spirit gradually becomes power, the Church itself becomes a mighty force, and power wins again in the end. Do you understand? Are you following? And who does it defeat? The original spirit, my Judaism, and it tramples on it with all its might again and again throughout history, and it survives only thanks to the spirit against the much superior power, it is the modest victory of spirit over power, and therefore does not become corrupt, until slowly its spirit grows stronger, becomes more successful and central in Europe. And then what does power do in response, what does it do in the most tremendous and insane outburst of oppression and power? It crucifies it. Power physically eliminates the Jewish spirit in Europe. And now, what happens, in the most ironic development, and therefore the most typically historical - are you following? Even the original spirit itself becomes power! And in doing so disappoints all the intellectuals in the world. That's why they hate Israel. Do you understand?

And all the readers in the newspaper are very pleased with my intellectual current affairs article, and the critics write: This is a brilliant piece about the Netanyahu era. It's the most apt thing written about Netanyahu, about how they persecute him and he plays the victim, and how he's the most powerful precisely because he thinks he's the most original spirit, but actually he's the leader of a garbage gang, and feeds on antisemitism and therefore nourishes it - in the garbage cycle, which the wonderful writer exposes in an original and mature parable. Where has this cat been until now? What a shame he was in the trash, and how lucky we are to have found such a literary discovery in the garbage.

And the second column is about a special cat. A cat that constantly gets entangled in honor wars and every meow immediately leads to a fight - and therefore he's missing an eye and a paw. Muhammad the cat. And I put my life in my hands, and in a brave journalistic achievement I dare to ask the fearsome Muhammad, who sits bleeding at the edge of the trash can licking his wounds after fighting over a female cat (he's married to four cats) over the honor of the concubine, and I ask him and immediately run away: Tell me, why do Muslims hate Jews? Why are you violent against us? What's the reason for antisemitism? And Muhammad the cat climbs to the top of the trash can and wails like the muezzin his doctrine: Wait wait until I catch you, you cowardly Jewish mouse in the form of a cat - and I'll show you the might of my arm and my intellectual prowess and the sharpness of my critical claws! Let's start by explaining to you, you snot-nosed Jew, that the basic division in the world is according to psychological fixations, which determine what nations are good at and what interests them and how they behave. The anal nations: wealth (Protestants). The genital nations: sex (Catholics). The phallic nations: honor (Islam). The oral nations: Africa and the Third World. Which are the most primitive, and still at the food stage of satisfying the most basic need. And the Jewish people - it is the people of the super ego. It has a fixation of a supreme self, and therefore everyone hates it, because it suppresses all other fixations.

Us, the phallic Arabs, you castrated with your circumcision, and when our erect muezzin tower wants to shout in the middle of the night - you silence it. The mosque is called that because it's the tower we worship, like every man wants his tower to be worshipped. Or like you ruined sex for the Catholic nations with Jewish confession and repentance, and now you can't just enter a woman's hole without the matter having a moral meaning, negative or positive, feminist or chauvinist, capitalist or socialist, in every intercourse you're either for Netanyahu or against him. And like you ruined the enjoyment of wealth accumulation for the Protestants through socialism and Marxism and charity for the poor and guilt feelings. You've even turned the ass into a moral issue. You can no longer enjoy hoarding and brooding over golden eggs as you should. And that's exactly your problem, of the super-ego, that you ruin every basic pleasure. For the Third World you've ruined even the simple enjoyment of survival and physical existence, with your Jewish Hollywood ideology, because now with every bite they only envy the West's plate and want to emigrate and their lives are not worth living. In short, you are the conspiracy of the world of spirit against the physical world. The Protocols of the Internet is a Jewish plot - and so is the computer mouse!

And the readers are beside themselves, and the critics unanimously praise: This is the deepest thing ever written on a subject close to our hearts - we've been waiting years for such a fiery article - about Rabin. Finally someone is talking about the heinous murder as it should be talked about, like a leftist moral lighthouse against right-wing muezzin incitement. About how violence is against peace, how Middle Eastern terrorism is against Ashkenazi tolerance, how the murder stems from fixation, how the gun is a phallic symbol that penetrates Rabin's body from behind and turns him into an anal symbol, just after he sang the song of peace in a rare oral outburst, and creates for us a genital wound that's always pleasant to dig into. The cat states loudly, without stuttering and without howling: The right is guilty! The right is guilty of Arlosoroff's murder, Rabin's murder, and Tair Rada's murder. And the article gets countless shares, especially because it came out close to the anniversary of the assassination.

And with the wind at my back, I go down to the people again, that is, to the trash. And I meet Moses, a well-groomed house cat, sitting on the balcony above the trash eating fish for Shabbat, while all the garbage cats are going crazy from the smell. And I ask him: Moses, why do people hate Jews? And Moses says: Because of the occupation. And goes back to tending to his fish. And the answer stuns me, so I try another way: Why do Jews hate themselves? And Moses says: I wrote a poem about it. Want to hear? And I say: What poem now? And Moses says let me express myself artistically. It's Shabbat songs. My mistress is crazy about the Song of the Sea of Gaza (I wrote that, did you know?), and this is my new one. Come listen. And he wails from the balcony like an opera singer courting under his lover's window, only reversed - he's on the balcony, and the cat he's trying to impress is in the trash. And like every leading intellectual he makes a lot of wind and bells, right above the physical trash, because this is the most successful courtship method... and this is the song (he sent it to the newspaper and is waiting for a response in the coming days):

The End of the Occupation

Again the tears over the occupation/No surprises, nothing new/The celebration is righteous/Self-righteousness celebrates/The Nakba that has no cure/Slipped away like passing love/And only disappointment on the faces/A keffiyeh full of rabbits/All the protesters have bled/Even the critics have fallen silent/The doves have flown.

Both the truth/And the fiction/What was/Was/The clinging to nothingness/And only you still/And again the tears over the occupation/And the struggle, less determined/Choked from your lips/Already parted from your yoke/And an end to the disruption.

And the audience is very disappointed. A flop. Very few shares. And the critics are also in agreement: This is a column on a worn-out and quite banal topic - the lives of cats in the garbage. Again kitsch about dreams and disillusionment from dreams. Yes, it talks about how being black is actually being a cat. How the fur and tail turn you into someone who lives inside a black hat. Portrait of the artist as a hairy shtreimel [Translator's note: A fur hat worn by some Hasidic Jews]. Not particularly original. It seems he's run out of topics and is recycling himself to death. He didn't really manage to get out of the trash. Because he is trash. That's what he is, and that's who he is, and he's not talented enough to transcend himself - and be someone else. For example, a human like us.