Mom of late hostage adopts rescued cat from Gaza 

When reserve soldier Yona Golan printed a social media submit, on the lookout for somebody to undertake a cat he rescued from Gaza, he didn’t suppose that one of many first folks to answer him can be Iris Haim. 

Haim misplaced her son, Yotam Haim, lower than three months in the past. The 28-year-old skilled drummer was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, close to the border with the Gaza Strip.

At the tip of December, Yotam was shot lifeless by Israeli troops within the Hamas-controlled enclave together with two different hostages, after the troopers tragically mistook them for terrorists. 

Saeed the cat

“I already have two cats,” Golan tells ISRAEL21c. “I was away from home, on reserve duty a lot. If I had just left [the cat from Gaza] with my own cats, they would have been fighting non-stop.”

Golan has been working with the central command of the Gaza Division for the reason that begin of the conflict. “We were inside one of the Islamic University of Gaza buildings, when I saw a ginger cat sitting on the roof of a car that was parked nearby,” Golan remembers. 

The 23-year-old skilled photographer determined to take a couple of footage of the fluffy feline. “While I was taking the pictures, he just came over and sat on my army vest.”

The cat, which Golan’s unit named Saeed, accompanied the troops all through the day, whereas they had been scanning the college building.  

A couple of days later, the troopers got here again to map the construction earlier than its demolition. “But, I told myself that I had to take the cat with me.”

Golan looked for the cat for almost two hours. “I almost gave up, but I knew the next day the building would be blown up and there was no way I would leave the cat there,” he says.

Finally, he noticed Saeed sitting on the hood of the IDF truck. “I gave the cat to my navigator while I drove us back to Israel.”

Once on Israeli soil

The remainder of Golan’s service was spent at a makeshift base on the border with Gaza. 

“Saeed would follow me everywhere; he loved to sleep in my bed. Everyone loved him, even my commanders, who took him to a vet clinic to get him all the necessary vaccines,” explains Golan. 

Ultimately, Golan determined the state of affairs wasn’t sustainable and the cat wanted a correct home. 

“I published a [social media] post with pictures I took of the cat, and Iris Haim’s daughter contacted me. She said they wanted to adopt him.”

After discussing the matter with the Haim household some extra, Golan determined to half methods with Saeed after almost a month collectively. 

“The day after I was released from reserve duty, me and my friend Ron drove the cat to Iris’ house. She made us tea, while I told her the story of how I found the cat. He was the only thing that felt like home to me during that time,” he provides. 

Apricot 

Although by no means explicitly talked about, it’s exhausting to not discover the similarity between the redheaded Yotam and the cat with the shaggy ginger fur. 

According to his mother, Yotam was an enormous cat lover. His most recent cat, Ramsey, ran away on the day of his proprietor’s abduction and by no means returned. 

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Iris wrote on her social media that adopting homeless animals, primarily cats, was her method of immortalizing her son. 

She urged those that need to honor Yotam to do the identical. 

“Every little cat that gets a home and doesn’t freeze in the cold outside is a world of its own. I’ve already adopted three cats. One of them — a redhead — was saved from the inferno in Gaza,” she wrote. 

Saeed was renamed Mishmish (Hebrew for “apricot”) not solely due to his colour but additionally in reminiscence of a earlier cat of Yotam’s that handed away.