To pet or not to pet, that is the question

A good friend of mine told me recently that his most traumatic first date took place on a busy street in Tel Aviv. He had met someone he was attracted to on a train ride, and after a few phone calls they decided to meet at a coffee house. The first part of the date seemed to go very well, but he was horrified half-way through when a street cat passed their table and his date reached into her bag for a tin of tuna, which she didn't hesitate to open up and give to the feral creature. Needless to say, this raised some obvious concerns for my friend and he hastened to end the date and the short-lived romance as soon as he could.

He may or may not have remembered that I am a true animal lover when he told me that story. Not that I would ever consider feeding a stray animal on the street, but I grew up in a house with pets and I am pretty fond of just about all of G-d's creatures.

I also have two cats at home, and am extremely fond of them too. Not only are they clean animals, but they require very little taking care of – feeding once a day and a bit of affection is all they really need. Just as importantly, cats have also helped me (on more than one occasion) to get out of a couple of fairly awkward situations without having to take personal responsibility for my actions. Allow me to explain…

A colleague at work asked if he could give a friend my number. I agreed, and was given a little background about the friend – he was a scholar, with a PhD in physics, played basketball and came from a nice family. Sounded good enough to me, until our first conversation, where we literally could not find one thing to talk about that would last more than a couple of words. Yes/no answers seemed to be the name of the game, and had this been a meeting via the Internet, there's no doubt I would have politely explained to me that it seemed we may not have much in common, and left it at that. Unfortunately, the etiquette of dating via friends is a little more complicated than that, and I found myself in a very awkward position. I'd rather have gone for root canal than have to spend an entire evening trying to make conversation with this stranger, yet how could I not? Until he called again to set up the date, and I asked him how he felt about animals. This was not a setup, just a desperate attempt to find something the two of us could possibly discuss. And he explained that he's super-allergic to animals, in particular to cats of any kind. In fact, he just THINKS of felines and starts to sneeze. I grasped the moment, and explained that not only do I actually like cats, but I have two of my own, and perhaps it wouldn't have been the best idea for us to meet. Neither of us would want to have to deal with a situation where he could never visit my home, now would we? And if he was THAT allergic, I would surely carry the allergens around on my clothes and we'd have hated for him to sneeze every time he saw ME, wouldn't we? I'm not sure whether he was as eager to get out of meeting me as I was to avoid meeting him, but he took the bait at first chance and agreed that perhaps we should, regrettably, agree not to meet up.

The thing is, cats are often a deterrent for potential partners. And sometimes one simply needs to take advantage. The other time I used cats to aid a great escape was when my parents' friends gave my number to someone they thought was nice (usually that means – he was also single, so let's just fix them up, surely they'll find SOMETHING to talk about…). I was not given a choice in this one – I got a call from this guy without any prior warning from the matchmakers. I felt extremely uncomfortable about the whole thing – I knew absolutely nothing about him, had no way of contacting the people who'd fixed us up (they'd gone on a cruise the day after dispensing my personal contact details), and felt a sense of obligation to my own parents not to embarrass their friends by refusing to meet their friend. So we planned a meeting at a bar in the area, and I arrived to find someone who, believe it or not, was missing a few essential facial features. In particular, there was a distinct lack of chin, which may have been deemed acceptable by some if it was not complemented by the total absence of top teeth. OK. I exaggerate. After some very close staring (I just couldn't help myself), I realized that teeth did EXIST on the top gum, but they were very very small. How small? I think it would be fair to compare them to the underscore key on a word processor. Short white lines protruding from the upper gum, with a lip literally falling over onto a non-existent chin. Get the picture? While this did not make for great viewing (and neither did watching him try to drink coffee), it also made understanding him a bit of a chore. And I had been down the road of trying to converse in Hebrew with someone who had a speech impediment before – not my strong point.

My patience had run out. Manners should only have to take one so far. So half an hour into the date, I told him that I had suddenly realized that I had forgotten to feed the dozens of street cats who live under my building (yes, desperate times call for desperate actions), and that I would have to run. I took a chance on him not being a cat lover, and was hoping to ensure that a second call would not follow. The bet paid off and I never heard from him again. Although there really weren't really dozens of cats under my building, my own house pets got a special tuna treat on my return.