A few posts ago I told you a bit about the cats I've lived with. Jet was something quite special. One of those 'One in a Million' cats. He lived until he was almost 18, hence there's alot of stories to tell.


As you can see, he was black (I know, the flash makes him look brown). What you may not be able to tell from the pic is that he was also HUGE. Not in a big, fat cat way (though me met that criteria at one stage too), but he was long, and tall. He was so long, he almost needed another set of legs halfway down his body. He had a fair smattering of Burmese in him, but was certainly nowhere near purebred.

We trooped off to the animal welfare league with the intention of coming home with a black male shorthaired kitten, which was to be called 'Jet'. Were were lucky in that they had a few that met the criteria, but Jet was the only one who showed us any interest. He was about 6 weeks old & adorable. Why did we want a black cat? apart from the fact that black cats are gorgeous, it was more for practical considerations. We had black furniture and I wore a lot of black. Having had light coloured cats previously, I wanted to avoid the look of cat fur on everything. It was only a problem when I wore white. unfortunately i don't have any pics of him as a kitten. :-(

Jet as a kitten was typical. Into everything, trying out his needle sharp teeth on everything and everyone and generally getting into mischief. I'm not sure how we trained him, but never in his life did he claw at screen doors. He used to lay across the back of your neck like a fur stole while you were sitting at the table eating breakfast...which led to one of his odd habits. He LOVED drinking the left over milk out of the cereal bowls. It was the sweetness of the sugar probably. He particularly liked Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and Nutrigrain. He did this until his passing.

As he grew he'd get more mischevious. We were only in a small 1 bedroom unit which had awful carpet & scrim curtains - the old 70's style with the big holes in the pattern. Jet had been playing in the windowsill one day and accidentally snagged his claw on the curtain, ripping it slightly. However it was only small & easy to mend. A blind man would have been glad to see the repair. That's if I got around to repairing it BEFORE jet shoved his head & leg through the hole before proceeding to fall off the windowsill onto the floor. Yep, he tore the whole bottom section off the curtain, which was now beyond repair.

He was also very playful. The unit was long, with the bedroom at the end of the lounge room. But the light switch for the lounge was at the opposite end of the lounge. So when retiring to bed, You'd have to walk through the lounge in the dark to get to the bedroom. Every night, Jet chose this time to hide behind furniture & jump out and ambush you! He'd take a flyinging leap at you from out of the darkness & would invariably scare the crap out of you. You see, he's always vary his vantage point, so you'd never really know where he was going to come from. After that, he'd hop on the bed with you & cuddle, for ages. he was very affectionate.


Once I'd dropped off to sleep though, he would climb up onto my pillow and lay down in one of two ways. Wither he would drape his front & back legs either side of my head - so I was wearing him like a hat, or he would get his back legs on top of my head, and gently push my head off the pillow until it was clean off onto the bed. This was fairly easy too as I used satin pillowcases (better for your hair). many a morning I woke up with a crook neck.

He was intelligent too. In fact we trained him. He was very spoilt, in that he used to have a veritable smorgasboard of dishes. One for dry food, one for wet, one for treats (usually chicken that he could smell at 100 paces, or cheese - grated of course), one for water and one for milk. We would always put his dishes down in the same order, so he was then able to tell us what he felt like to eat or drink. Easy.

Well, that's enough for one session....more later......

Labels: cats, jet