Jasper - In Memorium

Jasper

My sweet kitty died during the night.  He was 18 and knew his time had come.

He was a talker, and loud about it.  He could be wildly annoying when he started yelling at me that it was time to eat - over and over and over - even though it was still an hour till dinnertime.  I'd be ready to strangle him and it was hard to ignore him in a 24' box.

But he was affectionate and had a great purr.  The vet had a hard time hearing his heart a few days ago because Jasper kept purring.

He was a good companion to me and Roscoe, and also to Gracie and Dexter - Jasper enjoyed having the dogs nose him and would rub against them sometimes.  He and Roscoe fought sometimes, but Jasper would let Roscoe abuse him much longer than I was comfortable with.  And the two of them rode together comfortably inside the crate.  Jasper liked to sit up and look out the window while Roscoe slept.

He was not at all accepting of being an indoor cat and constantly tried to escape to the outdoors.  He was easy to catch, though, because he'd stop dead almost as soon as he got outside - he seemed stunned at all there was for him to see and smell.  The stakes were higher when we moved to the RV, because if he got lost he wasn't in some suburban neighborhood but out in the wild.  Still he stopped almost as soon as he got out so I could catch him.  There was the time, though, when I had to crawl under the RV to get him - I was not happy about that but Jasper was.

Jasper and Roscoe came as a pair when Momma and I adopted them 5 years ago.  They'd been in foster care for nearly a year, probably because the shelter had never updated their online profile after their initial intake: they had both needed dental care urgently and I'm sure most people were put off by that, as I was.  But when I asked, the shelter told me they'd taken care of that right away, so the kitties were well past that crisis.  Roscoe had only 1 tooth left and Jasper had none, both having had severe periodontal disease.  Jasper did just fine without any teeth, though, and it never stopped him from eating anything he wanted.

The shelter said a man had brought them in as strays, but since he said they should be considered a pair despite their 5-year age difference, the shelter believed the man had been taking care of them and just couldn't afford the dental work they so obviously needed.  Fine with me.  I got 2 sweet kitties out of it.

And they were a pair - they were happy sleeping together and sitting together and sometimes relied on each other for support in stressful situations.  I'm betting Roscoe's going to miss him a lot.

As I am.  What a sweet sweet guy Jasper was.  I was lucky to know him.