Kosher cat food is surprisingly rare in North London There are easier ways to spend a Thursday than explaining to a series of patient shopkeepers that you need kosher food for a cat that is not Jewish, not observant, and currently asleep on a windowsill in Cricklewood with one paw over its eyes. The cat belongs to my neighbour. She is away. I said I would feed it. She mentioned, casually, as people do when they are already halfway out the door, that the food in the cupboard was running low and that it had to be kosher. I nodded. I am a nodder. It is one of my less useful traits. The first shop, a small place near Golders Green station that smells agreeably of pickles and floor cleaner, had no cat food at all. The man behind the counter looked at me as if I had asked for a kosher ham sandwich and then, more kindly, suggested I try “the big place further up.” The big place further up had an entire aisle of pet food, none of it certified. A woman in a headscarf and excellent trainers told me her sister in Manchester used to get something sent from America, but the sister had moved, and anyway the cat had died. She said this without drama. London conversations often end this way. Online was worse. One site offered a brand that claimed to be “suitable for kosher homes” in lettering so small I had to enlarge it three times, only to discover the suitability consisted of the food not containing shellfish. Another wanted £18.40 for a pouch the size of a tea bag, plus delivery that would arrive after the neighbour returned. A third simply listed “kosher cat food” and then, when you clicked, showed you ordinary cat food next to an advertisement for a mezuzah. I began to feel I was being tested. What I had not expected was the number of people who wanted to discuss the theology of it. A man in Stamford Hill, queueing for challah, asked whether the cat was Jewish. I said it was a British shorthair. He nodded, as if this settled something. Someone else explained, patiently, that the issue is less the cat’s soul than the plates, the surfaces, the possibility of a non-kosher scrap migrating into a kitchen that has rules. I understood the principle. I also understood that the cat was not party to the principle. By late afternoon I had a tin of something imported, expensive, and bearing a hechsher I had to photograph and send to a friend who knows about these things. He replied that it was fine. The cat, when presented with it, sniffed, walked away, and ate a piece of ordinary kibble I had guiltily hidden behind the bread bin. I have decided not to mention this to anyone. Some struggles, once you have had them, are better left between you, the cat, and the receipt.

Kosher cat food is surprisingly rare in North London There are easier ways to spend a Thursday than explaining to a series of patient shopkeepers that you need kosher food for a cat that is not Jewish, not observant, and currently asleep on a windowsill in Cricklewood with one paw over its eyes. The cat belongs to my neighbour. She is away. I said I would feed it. She mentioned, casually, as people do when they are already halfway out the door, that the food in the cupboard was running low and that it had to be kosher. I nodded. I am a nodder. It is one of my less useful traits. The first shop, a small place near Golders Green station that smells agreeably of pickles and floor cleaner, had no cat food at all. The man behind the counter looked at me as if I had asked for a kosher ham sandwich and then, more kindly, suggested I try “the big place further up.” The big place further up had an entire aisle of pet food, none of it certified. A woman in a headscarf and excellent trainers told me her sister in Manchester used to get something sent from America, but the sister had moved, and anyway the cat had died. She said this without drama. London conversations often end this way. Online was worse. One site offered a brand that claimed to be “suitable for kosher homes” in lettering so small I had to enlarge it three times, only to discover the suitability consisted of the food not containing shellfish. Another wanted £18.40 for a pouch the size of a tea bag, plus delivery that would arrive after the neighbour returned. A third simply listed “kosher cat food” and then, when you clicked, showed you ordinary cat food next to an advertisement for a mezuzah. I began to feel I was being tested. What I had not expected was the number of people who wanted to discuss the theology of it. A man in Stamford Hill, queueing for challah, asked whether the cat was Jewish. I said it was a British shorthair. He nodded, as if this settled something. Someone else explained, patiently, that the issue is less the cat’s soul than the plates, the surfaces, the possibility of a non-kosher scrap migrating into a kitchen that has rules. I understood the principle. I also understood that the cat was not party to the principle. By late afternoon I had a tin of something imported, expensive, and bearing a hechsher I had to photograph and send to a friend who knows about these things. He replied that it was fine. The cat, when presented with it, sniffed, walked away, and ate a piece of ordinary kibble I had guiltily hidden behind the bread bin. I have decided not to mention this to anyone. Some struggles, once you have had them, are better left between you, the cat, and the receipt.

I only wanted a bagel. Two, if I’m honest, and maybe a third for the walk home, because the walk home from Golders Green is longer than you remember once you’ve already decided you’re starving. It was mid-afternoon, which in my experience is the correct time for a bagel. Morning bagels are a commitment. Evening bagels are a statement. Mid-afternoon bagels are simply correct. I had the route mapped in my head the way you map a route when you already know it: Carmelli first, then the other one, then the one that isn’t really a bakery but sometimes has them in a basket by the till. I was already tasting the salt. The first place had a queue, which I took as a good sign. Queues in Golders Green bakeries are not queues so much as temporary communities. You stand there and listen to people ordering things you didn’t know existed, and you feel briefly sophisticated for being in the vicinity of such knowledge. When I got to the front the woman looked at me with the particular kindness reserved for people who are about to be disappointed. “Bagels?” she said, as if the word itself had become slightly theoretical. “Finished. Come earlier.” I thanked her, because what else do you do, and stepped back into the road already recalculating. The second place had a sign in the window that said “Sorry, no bagels,” written in the handwriting of someone who has written it before. A man coming out with a paper bag saw my face and said, “They went at half eleven.” He said it the way people announce train cancellations: not unkindly, but with the understanding that the information will not help you. By the third place I was no longer browsing. I was hunting. The smell was still there, which felt like a personal insult. A teenager behind the counter was rearranging the remaining buns with the concentration of a museum curator. I asked anyway. He shook his head before I’d finished the sentence. “Everything’s gone,” he said. “Except the sweet stuff.” I looked at the sweet stuff. It looked back. Neither of us was convinced. I stood on the pavement for a moment and did the thing you do when a plan collapses, which is to pretend you are considering your options while actually just being hungry. A woman walked past with a bag that clearly contained bagels. I could hear them. She was on the phone, explaining to someone that she’d got the last six, and that next time they should text her earlier. I have never wanted to be someone’s earlier text so badly. There is a particular hunger that arrives when the thing you wanted was never exotic. I could have had a sandwich. There are shops. There is, somewhere in Golders Green, almost certainly a perfectly acceptable croissant. But a croissant is not what the afternoon had promised, and once an afternoon has promised you a bagel it is remarkably unwilling to renegotiate. I ended up in the supermarket, which felt like a defeat even before I saw the shelf. The bagels were there, in plastic, looking as if they had been briefed on the concept of bagels but not shown any photographs. I bought two. On the way to the till I passed a man holding a paper bag from one of the bakeries I’d already tried, and we made the small, wordless eye contact of people who understand that one of us has won. Outside, I ate the first one standing up, which is never the plan and always the reality. It was fine. It was a bagel. It was not, however, the bagel I had walked for, and the difference between those two things is larger than it has any right to be. Next time I will go at half past ten. I will text nobody. I will stand in the queue and feel briefly sophisticated, and if they have already gone I will at least have the consolation of having been beaten fairly, by people who wanted them more, or earlier, or both.

Zionism is indefensible racism. Killing innocent civilians because of their ethnicity/religion - in order to steal their land & destroy their homes - is indefensible. Please RT after voting - thank you.

That’s about 20 Epstein whistleblowers who have now ‘died by suicide’. Absolutely nothing suspicious about that at all…

Why I, as a Jew, also voted for the Zionism is racism motion. We must be approach this from a position of all human beings being equally valued, and the zionist position to the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people is incompatible with universal human suffrage.

This is the real story. Can the American political system survive high mortages, high fuel costs, and an increasingly feudal society? At what point will the working class unite against the barons that dominate and control their every waking moment?

One of the all time great context notes. Why is it up to randoms on the internet to correct what passes for 'journalism' in the US?

Well worth a watch... The laws of physics are immutable

BBC performing its function as a mouthpiece for western warmongers

As someone who can speak and read Hebrew, I believe it. Rabid.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme

Only 178 feet...

The BBC is allergic to telling the truth. It is anathema to their existence

How disheartening it must be to be Lebanese and watch as your countrymen do nothing as friends and family die.

I am a British Jew. I am an anti-Zionist. My family are Zionists. I have many relatives in Israel. I went on Birthright and it opened my eyes to the horrors of the apartheid regime. It is the moral responsibility of all Jews to oppose the genocidal government of Israel.