Of travel and cats

I can't say that I was a fan of the MBTA bus system when I rode it last summer. Busses to Waltham run infrequently, they don't always stop, and passengers don't only need to know what stop they need to get off at, but also the stop before.

The MBTA bus system is perfect compared to the Egged busses in Israel. Stops are not announced on the busses, so you have to know not just the street address of where you're going, but what the area looks like. Bus stops are not clearly labeled with which busses stop where, and the Egged website is really unhelpful—especially when the Trip Planner seems to be broken, because there is no other way to get the bus schedules.

All this amounts to one lost Dev. A friend from Brandeis is finishing up his time at the Conservative Yeshiva, so I went to spend time with him at Ben Yehuda. Had it not been for a friendly Israeli who heard me asking Ari about landmarks, I would have missed my stop entirely. Then, on the way back, I got on the bus in the wrong direction—because Hadassah Hospital and Hadassah University Hospital are not one and the same. I left Ben Yehuda at 9:23; I got home around 11. It was not fun, and I'm not particularly inclined to take the bus again any time soon. Then again, I'm going to have to—taxis are expensive, and there's no other way to get downtown.

In other news, I saw my first indication of kitty hardship yesterday. I sat down on the grass with two cats after class; one a skinny tabby, one a normal-sized black & white. There was no mistaking the tabby's hardship: I could feel his ribs, there were bumps in his fur near his neck, and the fur on his back was oily. The black & white cat didn't come to me for attention as the tabby had; he lay down on the grass a few feet away. He looked like a normal, well-fed house cat at first. Yet, when he got up, I saw a big, furless red patch on his skin where he'd gotten into a fight. Neither of these cats had both full ears—come to think of it, I don't think I've seen many cats with both ears intact, period.

Ulpan has started. I'll write about that later.