Dead Neighbor's One-Eyed Girl

Jack's Girl.  She Needs a Home!
(She is now at Safehaven under the name Matty!  Go Adopt her, PLEASE!)

My neighbor is dead.  He died three days ago, at least somewhere around three days back.  I don't really know when he died.  I only found out yesterday.  He'd been under hospice care.  So I didn't go over like I was doing, to chat with him, about once a day, when he became ill, with breathing issues and heart failure, after hospice took over and there were so many people I didn't know in and out.

He loved his three cats.  They followed him around when he walked outside, at his feet.  I wish I'd taken a picture of that.  He also yelled at them, when he was drunk. He yelled at them a lot in the night.  Made my stomach churn when I'd hear it.

I'll miss the old man, however.  There are not many cat lovers on this block.  Three, including myself, to be exact.  Now there are two.

If you help cats, it can be a lonely life.  You get ostracized.  Called crazy.  Even by people you're helping out.  Never has been easy.  So I came to this block when I had to move on the defensive.  Jack, the old man, was brutally honest and quite the bullshitter, but he liked me.  He shelled out hellfire and brimstone to people he didn't like.

I felt safe with him next door even though we were not close.  Safe in a way cat people crave.  He didn't call me nuts. He thanked me for helping out cats. He told me I was their Jesus Christ. (he wasn't religious) He never complained about anything, not like other neighbors on the block do.

So I knew he supported my labor to save local cats and get them fixed.  That's nice to have in a neighbor.

He wasn't frightfully OCD about the little front yard strips along here like some people are, like one neighbor in particular.

Jack is dead and left behind his best friends--three kitties.

By some twist of fate, I ran into the director of the local small no kill private shelter last night.  My cat loving neighbor asked me to go with her to her workplace last night.  She'd seen a Siamese in a drainage ditch that morning and he was still there when she left.  She was worried the cat was sick or hurt.  So off I went with my net and a carrier with her.

I saw two big Himalayans.  One laying outside the the drainage pipe in the ditch.  The other turning to hide from me inside the drainage pipe.  Cats use those pipes like highways.

Across the fence next to the ditch, a group of dogs yapped at me. There was a woman in the yard too.  I recognized her as the head honcho at that shelter.  I asked her if these were her cats.  They are.  Whew on that!  I then told her about my neighbor dying and his cats and asked if they were full.  She said they could take them in, one at a time.

I'm not so sure how tame two of them are, since the old man's been sick and they've mostly been on their own as a result.  I knew the one eyed girl kitty he adored would really need off the streets fast.  I like her.  Jack's asked me in the past to help him flea treat her and give her antibiotics daily when she got a urinary tract infection.  I'd do it for him, as he couldn't figure out how to get meds down her.

This morning I spotted her in his backyard, looking scared and forlorn.   The old man's daughter is up from Huntington Beach, CA, to clean out his place of belongings.  She brought her small dog with her.  I guess One Eye tried to enter the house at first, after she arrived but ran out when she saw it wasn't Jack in there and that dog.

I guess he had a reverse mortgage on his place.  His niece said it would be taken back by whomever holds that mortgage in 30 days.  I guess then it will be put on the auction block or put up for sale or whatever happens.

There are now three vacant houses on this block alone.  I wish they could all be filled with cat people.

I went over and talked to One Eyed girl, Jack's beloved, after spotting her.  She came running and cried against my legs.  Cried her eyes out.  I picked her up and held her and hugged her then I brought her into my bathroom and there she is now, relieved I can see.

But I can't keep her.  I wish I could as she knows me. Today hopefully, or tomorrow, she'll go to Safehaven.

If you are local and willing, go adopt her there.  She's so sweet and beautiful and older and she would love a home where she laid out nights on someones lap as they watch TV and never got yelled at again.