Erik D. Jones's Blog

Jake

When Jeremy passed away in March of 2006, I believe that Betty felt as great a loss as I did. Jeremy and Betty were best friends and I believe that Jeremy always thought of himself as her “big brother”. Lord knows she milked that from time to time to get Jeremy to beat up on Shadow when she wanted to play the victim. Anyway, after he died, I didn’t think it would be good for Shadow if I got another cat. With her age and her stubbornness to “play nice” with other cats, it just didn’t make sense.

Since Shadow passed away, I revisited the idea of getting another companion for Betty (and of course for Brian and I as well). Well along came Jake. Jake is a 7 year old whom we rescued from the San Jose Animal Shelter yesterday. His family decided not to keep him when they moved and left him with the shelter on December 5th. Unfortunately a lot of folks don’t want “old” cats so San Jose has to put many very sweet adoptable cats like Jake to sleep. Fortunately for Jake and for us, we met at the right time.

Our first night went surprisingly well. Betty isn’t sure what to think of him just yet and has been doing the angry cat sound and hissing dance. Jake hasn’t so much as meowed in her direction despite the mild aggression Betty has displayed. He slept downstairs by himself in the kitty bed Shadow used to favor.

Ultimately I think he and Betty will get along once Betty gets past her fear. Jake is surprisingly mild tempered and extremely sweet and loving. His motor runs at full blast and he has the daintiest squeak of a meow compared to his masculine feline appearance. I’m excited about spending the weekend with him.

We agonized over taking him or another cat named Domino at the shelter. I’m still half tempted to go back and get Domino (an amazingly friendly and gorgeous calico with extra toes who jumped into my lap the moment we met). <sigh> It was very hard to decide between the two. I can’t save them all, and I’m happy we have Jake. Still, Domino managed to grab hold of my heart strings quite firmly and I’m still thinking about him.