Jack the Cat

In 2001 my little sister came to live with me. However, when she came to live with me she had to leave her little dog behind. She was so sad and I was sad for her. Even though she was in her 20's at the time and capable of being a big girl, I felt bad for her, so I decided that she could get a cat. She was so excited. Even though I already had a crazy ass cat, named Fiona (seriously, this poor Siamese/Himalayan cat was just nuts...she had some sort of feline induced schizophrenia!). A friend of mine at the time just so happened to have 6 week old kittens. My sister let me pick out the kitty (she had a work commitment and was not able to pick out her kitty), this most likely was a huge mistake, because somehow this little kitty and I now had a bond. I mean, I chose him above all the kitties in the litter. A few weeks later I brought Jack home for my sister.

 A few months after my sister got her feet she and Jack moved to their own apartment. Then the news came...Jack was not welcome at my sister's new home. It had something to do with the fact that, NO ANIMALS WERE ALLOWED  in my sister's apartment. Somehow, she forgot this important contractual detail when she secured her apartment. She got found out and it was either her or Jack. So of course, since I was the one who picked him out, I was the obvious choice. Jack was back. Needless to say, Fiona was not happy. I was half and half. I loved Jack, but I never planned on having two cats. Fiona was an inside cat and Jack decided that he wanted to be an outside cat.

Shortly, after Jack came back to live with me, Fiona  got depressed. She did not like having Jack around and it made her feline schizophrenia worse than ever. I had such a hard time for awhile, I really wanted to keep both of them, but due to Fiona's depression she ended up living under my bed for about month. She got a little feisty, scratching me if I tired to coax her out and the like. I finally gave her away to another cat person who was more able to take care of a high maintenance cat like Fiona.

Jack and I had a happy time for awhile. He and I got into a groove.

In the winter of 2003 I got pregnant with Jettson. I was a little more than preoccupied with my new bump and sorta put Jack at the end "pay attention to" list. Then one day, hubs asked me if I had seen Jack? Jack was prone to taking off for a day and returning late at night or early morning so I hadn't noticed that he had been gone for a few days. Panic set in, our first thought was a raccoon had got him. We have a nice little pack of bandits who occupy our nearby "woods" (really it's just an over grown knoll that we refer to as the woods). We hunted around for him, asked around for him...no one had seen him. At which point, we began to think that he may have been struck by a car. We get a lot of traffic at certain times of the day and evenings just below our condo. A month or so went by and we had no clue what had happened to our sweet little Jacky.  This was a big reason why I did not not an outside pet. It's too unpredictable to have them outside. I could not contain Jack to the indoors no matter how hard I tried. And now my worst fear had come to pass, surely he was hit by a car or the pack of 'coons got him?

By the Fall of 2003 we still did not know where Jack went. We talked about him from time to time. I would still call for him in hopes that he would return. Our neighbors asked about him. By Halloween night I was swollen with baby and ready to pop, but hubs and I still wanted to be a part of Halloween, so we ventured out to downtown Santa Cruz for a night of head turning, and eye popping costume watching. We got home just before midnight. As we were walking up to our front door....we were approached by a tom car apparition, who very much looked like, Jack! We could not believe our eyes! We kept calling him and he would meow back at us. It was a Halloween miracle! He came inside and we kept asking him where in the hell had he been these past 7 months?! He was meowing his responses to us...of course we could not understand a word he meowed to us. Jack was back, again.

The next morning, Jack wanted to back outside. I was sad. I kept telling him that he needed to stay in with us, it was dangerous outside. Something had changed with Jack. He somehow seemed older and wiser...he grew up and I had to let go, again. I worried all day wondering if he would come back, he did and has every day since.

About a week later we had found out what happened to Jack. There was a crazy cat lady in our complex. A little girl had come up to hubs and asked him if the black cat was his? Hubs responded with yes...the little girl went on to say that there was an old lady moving from the complex and she wanted to take Jack with her. Hubs could not believe what he was hearing. The little girl told hubs that she has had Jack for months and wanted him back! Hubs told the little girl  that she could go tell "crazy cat lady" no, and that Jack was our cat, that we had been worried about him for months.

The facts are, Jack is a cat and he really doesn't belong to anyone. He was picked out by me, loved by my sister, he's fed by the neighbors, sleeps at home most of the time, but he has multiple beds around the neighborhood. He has a few names, Jack, Boots, Changes.