Getting some much needed sunlight.
The Saga of Jaipurr
We are repeating the story enough to warrant having it written down somewhere that we can point people to, so here is the story of our lost and found kitty, Jai.
Jai went missing in the last week of November, the same week we found out that our newest addition to the family was a boy. It was hard to feel excited about a new little boy when feeling like we’d had to give up our fur-boy. We leafletted the surrounding houses, knocked on neighbours’ doors asking about him, visited various animal shelters, rang nearby veterinary clinics, all to no avail until…. 4 days after we had last seen Jai, someone called from the nearby buddhist meditation centre to tell us they thought our cat was in their roof. We rushed over as quickly as we could, departing a friend’s birthday rather dramatically and in great excitement, only to spend a couple of hours in the kitchen of the meditation centre, querying what exactly they had seen/heard and searching for ways to check the roof. The story was that two of the residents had heard meowing in the kitchen roof and heard something thumping on the flue above the stove, however when we said that we were on our way over, they vascillated and told us they had fed the cat and that the cat should be fine until morning – but when Rafe talked to them and refused to leave it til morning, they admitted they hadn’t actually seen the cat or fed him, they were just trying to make me feel better. This didn’t set us up to feel confident in anything we were being told afterwards.
We couldn’t work out why Jai would suddenly have become trapped in a roof which he presumedly visited regularly; this roof had become the source of the mice he kept bringing home to play with! The resident explained that a tradesman had been over during the week fixing up a hole in the roof where possums had been getting in. However, we couldn’t go on the roof to look at the area or try to undo the work that had been done as the resident did not have any authority over the actual premises. We were pretty anxious and he eventually called someone with more authority over what could be done.
After much deliberation once the new person arrived (we’ll call him Mr K) it was finally decided that we could cut a hole in the side of the flue and try to attract Jai out that way. By midnight we’d had no success and were advised that perhaps we should go home and leave food and water behind in the hole which had been made.
We hoped and prayed that Jai would come home sometime in the wee hours but morning came and still no Jai. We went back to the centre as soon as we were given the OK by Mr K; by this stage extremely frustrated at it not being our roof and therefore us having limited ability to do whatever it took to get Jai back. Another couple of hours of calling Jai, heating up anchovies and wafting the scent through the roof, we even called the fire brigade (on advice from RSPCA and various vet clinics) but finally had to give up. The roof was a flat roof with no way for a person to get inside. The only way we could possibly search the roof would be to lift it off, piece by piece. In all this time we had not heard a peep from the roof and Jai had not come to us – we expected if he couldn’t come to us he would at least indicate he was there and it seemed improbable that he could be thumping on the stove flue one hour the night before, then completely non-responsive once his humans were there in the following hour and the following morning. Additionally Mr K told us that the roof repair work had been done on a different section of the compound, not remotely connected to the kitchen roof; if this were so, then there was no reason for Jai to be trapped.
We walked home bawling, not knowing if we were leaving our beloved puss in the roof but having nothing at all concrete to go on to justify destroying someone else’s roof. In the weeks that followed we became convinced that he had been hit by a car and gone off to die somewhere (horrible, horrible thought) or that someone had taken him for a lovely Christmas present (best case scenario, short of him returning home). His sister Shakti was miserable without her play and snuggle buddy. She became much more human-focused and needy of attention. We debated off and on whether to get a new kitten to keep her company, finally deciding that she would give us the lead: if she seemed distraught and miserable when we returned from 5 days away over Christmas (despite having had dedicated cat sitters with her the whole time), we would get her a new companion; however if she seemed okay with us having been away then we would leave her as an only cat and continue to spoil her rotten.
She was okay and we decided that we were destined to be a one cat family. It didn’t feel right but we were slowly getting used to it.
Then on Wednesday night (Dec 29), we received a call from MrK saying that our cat had just come out of the roof. Over the weeks, we’d had a couple of neighbours call us, thinking they’d found our cat and it was always a little black cat that seems to get around. So we assumed it would be that cat, however we would still go and check it out. Mr K turned up while we were still getting shoes on and we looked at the cat in their carrier. First look told us it wasn’t the little black cat. The cat was very skinny and I started to think it could be Jai, but difficult to tell without the collar and with the cat looking so thin and different. We both checked the tail at the same time – Jai has a kink at the end of his tail that he’s had since he was a kitten – and sure enough it was him. We just couldn’t believe it. By this time it had been 5 weeks since he went missing. Mr K told us that they had left the hole there and periodically put fresh food there. They’d had a couple of possums come out of the roof over the weeks, and then Jai.
The first night was completely surreal. We fed him pellets and water and watched to check he didn’t make himself sick. He seemed to be self-restricting his food intake, taking small amounts often so we put out meat for him as well. The rest of the night we spent watching him, reassuring him that he was home and stopping Shakti from chasing him away.
Shakti did not take well to his return, we suspect partially because he smelt wrong (he was pretty stinky and didn’t start smelling like himself until 24 hours of being home, eating his normal food.) but mostly because she had started to enjoy this life of being the sole recipient of all the humans’ attention. We’d been trying so hard to make it easier for her that we’d taken to playing with her 2-3 times a day, brushing her once a day and consistently giving her attention to make up for the loss of her play/grooming/snuggle buddy. It seems we’d succeeded and she was not ready to let him back in.
The night was long and mostly sleepless. Shakti kept playing up, wanting to come to bed with us but objecting to the fact that Jai was there. She would rattle the blinds once or twice an hour, did a couple of bed laps, growling at Jai and eventually settled at Rafe’s feet for a couple of hours. Meanwhile around 4:30 when I woke up, again, Jai realised I was awake and left Rafe’s arms to come and have active snuggles with me. For two hours he just wanted pats and reassurance – all I can guess is that he’d dreamt that he was back in the roof and needed active physical reassurance that he was home, safe.
Once Rafe was awake for the day, Jai would not leave him alone for a second. He wanted to be on Rafe or next to him *at all times*. Rafe and I were both working on little sleep, which always makes me very grumpy and snippy (bodes well for next year with Zac’s arrival, huh) and continually trying to avoid the “what if” game. It feels horrible knowing that we did leave him there, even though we weren’t sure at the time that he was in the roof. We still don’t know why he didn’t come to us or make some noise when we were calling for him in the roof. Unfortunately we’ll never know the full story. The best we can do at this time is not dwell on all the possibilities and instead focus on helping Jai settle in to life here again.
His personality is different and we don’t know how permenant the change is. He is more clingy, unwilling to even go out into the yard without us around, disinclined to play, completely subservient to Shakti and overall quieter and sadder. Some things we can see changing as he relaxes – currently he is sitting in the cat herb patch (cat mint, cat grass, cat nip and cat thyme) in our front yard without Rafe or I being there. He shows no inclination to follow us up the alley on our walks which we think is a fine thing. We dearly hope that his roaming instinct will have been worn out with this experience and that he remains more of a stay-at-home cat. Rafe says cats have 9 lives: 3 for playing, 3 for straying and 3 for staying. We think surviving 5 weeks in a roof surely used up the straying lives!
We took him to the vet who gave him a clean bill of health, a vitamin injection and a quadruple worming dose to counteract the worms he would have consumed with the mice. He commented that if we’d brought Jai in without telling him the story, he would have said he was a perfectly healthy cat, a little on the lean side but looking very good. I think it is good that Jai hadn’t lost his winter weight at the time of getting trapped- it obviously served him well. To us he still seems too thin so we are feeding him more often than usual but basically following his requirements. He is pretty good at letting us know during the day if he wants some more meat.
He and Shakti have made progress. Shakti had a complete tantrum one morning; there really is no other way to describe it. She and Jai were on the table and she hissed and growled at him to chase him off. We told her “no” and she jumped off the table and up onto the kitchen bench and stove top where she knows she is not allowed, and meowed at me. I told her “no” and picked her up and she yowled and growled and squirmed. We decided she needed some time out so put her in the front yard and she was more relaxed and herself after a couple of hours in the garden without seeing Jai. After that things started to turn around: first the hissing stopped, then the growling, then Jai was able to go and snuggle with her if she was already asleep. Finally last night she got up to leave Jai (he was snuggling her), paused and then decided to snuggle into Jai instead. As she resettled, she washed his face, then cuddled into him like she used to. They are not up to playing together yet, Jai still seems to fragile and just desperate for love, but we don’t think it is far off.
It is heartbreaking to see the changes and I would do almost anything to take away the last 5 weeks, from all of us but particularly from Jai. All I can hope is that our love and attention will restore some of the old Jai back, cheer up the new Jai and pray that he never has such a mishap again.
Jai, in his most favourite place of all – Rafe’s arms!
Thank you for sharing this, I’m sure it was quite hard to write. I expect with a bit of time Jai will bounce back, not necessarily to exactly the same cat, but we are all changed by experiences and he has such wonderful humans and a wonderful home that I truly believe it will work out alright. Don’t beat yourself up about not finding him sooner, you did all you could, cats are extremely stubborn and it is pretty much impossible to understand why they do or don’t do things when in trouble. I’m so sorry you all had to go through such a horrible rough time and I hope your household equilibrium returns to something that is good for you all as soon as possible. Love and hugs and happy 2011.
P.S. Totally unrelated but nice: We just gave your beautiful cherry blossom image with the lamp to our friend and he almost cried with happiness. He couldn’t believe that it was for him. He and his girlfriend are about to move into a new house and he is absolutely over the moon with the image 🙂
The house equilibrium is returning – it makes me so happy to see two kitty cats roaming around our house and Jai does not even want to venture onto the letterbox, let alone outside the yard so we have two cats here with us all the time. Bliss.
I’m thrilled that your friend loved the photo 🙂