One Eyed Jack
It’s with a broken heart that I type this letter. Our beautiful One Eyed Jack went to the rainbow bridge last night taking a huge piece of our heart with him.
It was a cold crisp February day that I came to Neady Cats. You see, my oldest daughter moved out and took her large kitty with her. My house became all too quiet so I called Neady Cats asking if there was a large kitty available for adoption. I was told there was one, but he was missing an eye and sometimes people shy away from animals that are “different”. I made an appointment and drove to meet him. You brought me into a room where Jack was more interested in checking out the room. I asked if I could hold him and hoisted this 17 pound boy up and knew he was meant to be with me. He was so handsome and I fell in love.
Over the past few years, his health has been declining. He developed an abscess in his eye socket, we had that drained and they did a biopsy to make sure there was no underlying cause. There was none. He recovered nicely. We did notice that he was eating constantly but losing weight and drinking a lot. He was down to 14 pounds and blood test showed there was no thyroid problems and he wasn’t diabetic.
He was just very old. Last year, he had a bout with feline vestibular syndrome. That was horrible. At first I thought he had a stroke and like the beautiful man-cat that he was, he recovered almost 100%. He still had twitches, but he was perfect to us. As this past year progressed, he got thinner but he still did all the things he normally did. He was still Jack. He eventually went totally deaf but would recognize hand signals (he was such a smart boy). He also had a touch of feline senility that got bad as the year pulled to a close.
Last night, at the vet, I held him with my nose against his, as he breathed his last. Until we meet again, my heart won’t be whole.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to love him. He was truly a most wonderful companion.
Marianne Svedberg
