365 True Things: 356/Cats III

What to say about sweet Jolie?

We got her at the SPCA, in March 2009, after having lost our black cats Java and Jamaica a year-plus before to a coyote. We needed to get some feline energy back in our lives.

Her particular energy spoke to us immediately: so calm and regal. She was a little over a year old, and her ear had been clipped, signaling that she was "feral." As if. She was the least feral kitty on the planet.

She was also the prettiest thing: so we called her Jolie, continuing the J tradition.

She liked to climb trees.

She also liked to go for walks with us. Seriously! Whenever we'd head out of the house and down the street, if she was sitting in the front yard and happened to notice, she'd run after us and trot along happily—as far as the park a few blocks down. There she'd wait until, half an hour or an hour later, we returned, and she'd run out of the bush she'd been hiding under and accompany us back home.

She loved to lounge on the scratching post she inherited from our first cat, Tisiphone.

She liked to smell the flowers.

She did not especially like the whippersnapper puppy Milo when he showed up. But she got used to him.

When we were building the house, she moved to my studio apartment in Carmel Valley with me. I didn't like to let her out because I was afraid she'd get lost or hit by a car, but she occasionally escaped. She loved being outdoors.

She also loved climbing up into the warm loft and sleeping on my bed. Which involved scaling a vertical ladder. At first, I carried her up with me, and then down again. But she soon decided that she could handle the ladder herself. And she did! (Though I tried to help her down. It was a pretty long jump.)

She settled happily back into the new house: she especially liked to hang out by the bird feeders. Yes, unfortunately, she also liked to catch said birds. Bad kitty. Though she was even better at catching gophers, which she sequestered in the bathtub: her private abattoir. We often found gopher bits and blood decorating the white plastic. Good kitty!

Sadly, she vanished on November 19, 2013. I remember the last time I saw her. I had just had a new easy chair delivered to my upstairs loft, and for some reason I'd closed the nearby window that she often used to leave or come into the house, climbing down or up the nearby oak tree, and going her merry way. So she couldn't access the house as usual. I saw her outside near the front door around noon. And that was the last time.

We put up signs along the street, but they didn't help. Jolie was gone. It could have been a coyote again, sadly. But who knows?

I can't believe we only had her four and a half years. It seems much longer. She had many adventures and, I believe, a good, if short, life. 

I still miss her. Just looking at the chair—not always, but sometimes—causes a twinge of sadness. She was a sweet, sweet kitty.