Meet Jet

This is our sweet, beautiful Jet. He was a stray, and we would see him roaming the neighborhood for at least two years before he came to us. He would always fight with Raja if my very territorial Raja saw him.

Then one day I saw that they weren’t fighting. They were actually sitting next to each other in the front yard. Of course when I got my kitties in the house for dinner, I couldn’t let him go hungry, so I left some food out for him. That was the beginning of him adopting us.

We got him fixed by the feral cat people. The funny thing is, my neighbor was also feeding him and had made an appointment with the feral cat people on the same day. We got him and took him in.

He was mad at us for a few days, but kept coming back for food anyway. As time went by, he became friendlier and friendlier and even let us partially bathe him and brush him. He was a mess. We kept giving him flea medicine so the fleas would not come back.

Winter was approaching so we put a cat door in our garage so he could get in there. He had a cat tree, toys, blankets; but most of all a safe place to stay. We tried bringing him in the house, but he was too scared to stay long. He was also not litter box trained, so we couldn’t leave him there, and he occasionally sprayed. We could bring him in for short periods of time with supervision, and he loved sitting by the fireplace or sitting in our laps.

It was sad that he couldn’t really be trusted in the house, because he was otherwise very friendly and sweet and got along with my other cats.

We eventually got him to our vet to check him out, and they cleaned him up a little more. She said he had diabetes, so we started giving him oral medication and acupuncture, of all things. He was so compliant, it was amazing.  This brought his blood sugar down to just a little greater than normal. We were all very happy about that. We got him chipped and gave him a pretty collar which he seemed to like. He was stray no more and a real member of the household, just not one we could keep in the house unsupervised.

We kept giving him partial baths as much as he would tolerate, and brushing him until all of the guck was out of his fur and his black coat glistened. Some of the missing fur around his neck even started coming back.

We had him for about 2 1/2 years, and then one day he just disappeared. We don’t know what happened to him which made us very sad. We put up fliers and checked the shelters multiple times. The hardest part is not knowing what happened to him. We still check the front door or back door whenever an automatic light comes on, and look closely whenever we see a black cat. And if he is in kitty heaven, I hope he has all the food he needs and someone to pet and hold him and keep him warm. Jet, we love you!