To complete Sharav’s adoption, I had to do a little paperwork and make a “donation” of a few hundred shekels to the shelter, and then two days later, on Sunday 22 April 2007, I took multiple buses to reach the South Tel Aviv home of Vitaly, who had rescued Elvis from the street in the Krayot during Pesach.
Wait. Elvis? His nose was warm and dry when I met him at the shelter, since he had not been drinking water, so I decided to name him Sharav (שרב), which is not quite a heat wave, but a type of hot and dry dust storm that occasionally blows out of the desert in the spring and autumn (in Arabic, it’s called “hamsin,” or fifty, the number of days per year that it’s said to happen).
Vitaly, however, had named him Elvis, probably because his approximate date of birth was 8 January, which was Elvis Presley’s birthday.
When we met at SOS. Ramat Aviv, April 2007. Click any photo to see more.