Seven years ago my daughter arrived home with a tiny ginger fur baby. He was curled up on her shoulder hiding under her hair which was the same colour as his fur.This little fur baby had been found crawling out of a ditch out in the fens by her brother and his friend.
She named him Jaffa and he quickly became a much loved member of our family. At his first vet check up we were told that he was probably about four weeks old when found and that the love and attention she had given him had saved his life. The two of them became pretty much inseparable. When Huni left the house to travel or go to college Jaffa would hang out with whichever adult was home until she returned.He always knew when she was on her way home and would stand on the window sill waiting for her to walk down the road.
He was a cheeky cat always ready for a second breakfast ,or a third or a fourth. Basically anyone who entered the kitchen was worth a try for more food! He was a prolific hunter and usually ate what he caught despite being well fed! It wasn’t always a pleasant experience walking into the kitchen and stepping on the entrails of his left overs! Occasionally we would have to shut him away whilst we helped a mouse escape back into the wild.
Jaffa had a lot of character. From high fives to beard rubs with my husband and being awoken by him stroking your chin cos it’s daylight and that means breakfast! No Jaffa not at 4 o’clock in the morning it’s not! Last year I was left home alone with my fur babies whilst everyone else was off travelling either for work or pleasure.Winter is not my favourite time of year, lack of sunlight really gets to me and Jaffa decided I needed cheering up so he woke me a 3am by jumping on the bed and patting my chin til I opened my eyes. Then he ran to the end of the bed jumped to the floor and stood mewing at me until I went to look. As I looked bleary eyed over the edge of the bed he literally held out his paw and proudly presented me with the gift of a dead vole.” Ta da there you are Mum I love you”.He was so proud and it was so sweet.
Jaffa was at times all Ginger Tom and Fen cat and at others the sweetest most loving fur baby I’ve ever met and I’ve always had pets. He was my daughters best friend and familiar and their bond was incredible.
On the eve of the Spring Equinox Jaffa went out for his usual night time stroll and within 30 minutes of leaving the house got attacked by two terriers. My neighbour had let his dogs off the leash and they had cornered our beloved fur baby. By the time my husband and daughter got to him and pulled the dogs off he was in a bad way. As my husband carried him to the house he took his last breath and died in his arms.My husband and my beautiful daughter both fell apart and we all went into shock. My husband went and got the dogs owner to come and see the damage they had done and to be fair he came and was visibly shaken and distressed.
He left and we wrapped Jaffa in a sheet to keep him warm (crazy but thats shock) and laid him on the kitchen table. The kittens were put to bed in another room whilst we sat and cried and tried to make sense of what had happened.We decided to keep him in the house as we didn’t want to leave him outside in the dark. Eventually after endless cups of hot sweet tea we went to bed but I couldn’t sleep.I kept thinking about the viciousness of the attack and how awful it must have been for him. I got up thinking I’d light a candle and as I opened the bedroom door I could hear my daughter retching in the bathroom as the shock kicked in so we went downstairs together and sat in the kitchen with more hot sweet tea. We lit a candle and sat with Jaffa and talked about him and his ways and what we would miss about him. His body was beginning to smell so we sprayed him with Frankincense . As the candle burned we both felt a shift and it came to me that we were sitting vigil as his spirit gathered itself together ready to leave. There was so much love in the kitchen as we sat either side of him and we knew we had to wait for daylight before we could move his body outside.
As daylight approached and the birds began to sing we moved our precious baby to the caravan in the garden to rest safely until we could bury him later that day.We buried him at sunset on the Spring Equinox .
It has taken three days for us to work through the shock. We haven’t worked until today. My daughter and I didn’t eat until yesterday .I was in such shock that I didn’t even think to get the homeopathic remedies out until after we’d laid him to rest in the garden.
Some people think its crazy to be so distressed by the death of a pet but to us its like losing a member of the family. The owner of the dogs admitted that he knew they chased cats and that one of them doesn’t come back when called and that just makes it worse. Jaffa was killed because the owner didn’t think and take responsibility for his dogs.He has said that he will not let them off the lead now unless they are out in the woods or across the fields so hopefully this has been his wake up call.
I took my daughter out to lunch because she needed to get out of the house and as we sat looking out at the river she said “I’m in mourning. How long does it last?”
As she spoke I realised that we are all in mourning and that it takes as long as it takes. We have lost animals before but always through old age or sickness and always with time to say our goodbyes. Over the past five years as a family we have dealt with a lot of deaths. All of these deaths were difficult and through all of them Jaffa cat was there with his love and his cuddles, and his needless death has hit us really hard.We are getting used to it now but I am going to miss him. I will think of him on sunny days when I look out of my office window and he is not on the shed roof sunning himself. I miss his mew as he comes through the cat-flap at dinnertime.I will miss him being on the window sill waiting when I get home from a day out or a trip to the super market.Most of all I will miss his high fives and his cuddles at the end of the day. He was the best fur baby. he taught us how to serve him well and these skills will benefit the kittens now.I woke up this morning with the song “In the arms of the Angels” playing in my head and knew that he is being cared for.
He was our Beautiful Ginger Fur Angel and irreplaceable.