My Sweet Jade

My sweet humble Jade has left us.

My heart aches today.  Last night, all I could was hug old Lucy and sob.

I took Jade, along with Stormy, a black neutered male some ladies gave to an older man who lives in kind of a halfway nursing home, to the coast clinic.  Jade's right eye had been swollen.

I'd gone to a convenience store and overheard a woman talking to the animal control officer about Stormy.  She was among other ladies who gave him to John, but said the cat needed shots and checked by a vet so he could keep him.  He couldn't afford this and she was asking the officer about possible programs.  So I stepped in and offered, since I was going with Jade.

The vet examined Stormy first.  Stormy is not without issues.  His mouth is inflamed.  The vet says if he'd been on the streets, stress and bad diet could be the cause but we both knew it could be autoimmune and this could be a condition he carries til he dies.  She gave him a cortisone injection.  He also got flea treatment, worming and his vaccinations.  He was dehydrated, so fluids were part of his treatment and he got take home antibiotics.

I left Jade there at the clinic.  The vet did a quick exam but couldn't do so completely until she was under.  She was hopeful the eye problem would be glaucoma and removing the eye would do the job for her.  Hope for her soared within me, because I really believed she had cancer and was terminal.  I was so ecstatic to hear maybe it was glaucoma.  I'd ruled infection out in my mind, because I've seen cats that get infection within the eyeball and it proceeds nothing like Jade's condition had.

Stormy and I headed to the beach, the usual parking lot, near the south jetty where the Columbia River meets the Pacific.

Off and on, rain splattered the car and wind occasionally shook it, but the weather was not that bad.  It was not cold outside, just, at times, a bit rainy or windy or both.

I sat cross ways in the front, feet and legs resting on the daypack on the passenger side seat.  Stormy roamed the car and finally settled in on my legs for a nap.

But it was not long beyond the time I knew the examinations of surgery patients would begin that the phone rang.  The vet said Jade had extensive mouth cancer that had invaded the eye socket and her jaw and they'd found a lump near her stomach that likely was cancer also.  She recommended euthanasia, citing the extreme pain of facial cancer.  I know about facial pain.

  I cringed to think of my sweet baby girl suffering with such pain and immediately gave the go ahead.  The vet was very very kind.  So were staff when I arrived to pick up the empty carrier and pay the bill.   I held it together until I got the bill paid, then broke into tears as I was leaving.  A young woman tried to comfort me.   I appreciated this.

Goodbye Jade.  I wanted to be your hero, get that bad eye removed, take you home, care for you, see you happy again.   I love you.

Jade had many many friends here.  Sam was her best friend.  I found her in a garage corner in Millersburg with newborn kittens.  The people didn't want her, or the kittens.  The house is on the same corner where, a few years later, I found another mother and kittens, in the road, in a fluke, when a friend suddenly decided, not long before Christmas, she wanted to see Millersburg.  We came around a corner, on that road, where I had directed her, to show her where Jade came from, to see that mother laid out in gathering dark, and rain, in the the middle of the road, two kittens danced around her.  We brought them to my place.

We will all miss you, Jade. 

Back in early summer 2009, when I took in Jade and her five kittens, she was an adult already and her age is unknown.  I know she is at least 9 1/2 years old but probably older.   I made six videos  about the garage kittens.  These are the first three.  Four of her five kittens survived, were fixed, and adopted out.