“Have you seen the cute picture of the tiger kitty in the office?” Meredith asked me as she walked into my office at work. I had not, and she encouraged me to check it out the next time I was in the office. I did, and I saw a very cute adult tiger cat, sitting in a basket, and he was up for adoption from a colleague who had developed allergies after many years of living with the cat. I agreed it was a cute photo, but we had two kitties at home, so I did not give much thought about him.

“I miss my tiger kitty,” Meredith commented at home. A few weeks before, we had to put our tiger cat, Bocca, to sleep because he had kidney failure. “Uh-huh,” was my non-committal answer. I admitted the house seemed emptier with only two kitties, but I did not think we needed another one so soon after Bocca had died.

Wrong. Over the next few days, Meredith became more insistent that we needed another tiger kitty, and so I found myself driving over with Meredith to my colleague’s house to meet Jackson, our new tiger kitty.

When we met him, he was wearing a little red bow around his neck. We were told that the adult son of the family had thought he should look nice for us. We went back to the kitchen to pick up a few left-over supplies, and when we went back to Jackson, he had managed to get his bow off. I was rather taken by that.

We got Jackson home and slowly introduced him to our other two cats. He did not take it well. He spent much of his time, those first few weeks, hunched into a little ball on our rug in the hallway. I do not know why he felt safe there, but he did.

Jackson eventually learned to co-exist with the other cats, but as a sweet-tempered and somewhat skittish cat, he was easily chased around by the other cats that we had over the last few years. They all seemed to sense that he would not fight back, and so he became the chase-toy often.

Jackson was sweet (we have a theory that all tigers are sweet), and he liked to be near me and Meredith. If we were on the couch or in bed, that is generally where you would find Jackson. He also always remained young-at-heart. We think Jackson was about 10 years old when he came to our home in the fall of 2009, and he lived another 7 years. During that entire time, he loved to play. This was especially true in the winter when I would put on my boots. He would come running from wherever he was so he could play with my boot laces. He did that up to within two weeks of when he died. In fact, when he stopped playing with my boot laces, I knew he was really sick.

Jackson was declawed in his front paws, but he still had his back claws. In fact, he could not fully draw them in. This could get your attention when he jumped into or out of your lap, but in general it was funny because he sounded like he was wearing tap shoes on our wooden floors – he clicked wherever he went.

Jackson was sweet, but the one place he would drive me crazy was in the kitchen. If I was in the kitchen in the afternoon or evening, Jackson would let me know in a loud voice that he wanted to eat. We usually fed the cats canned cat food around 5:00 in the evening, but as soon as I got home, be it 3:00 or 4:45, Jackson was sure to start reminding me that there was no food on the floor for him to eat.

Jackson absolutely loved having his ear scratched. I could dig in behind his ears and actually start to lift him off his front feet, and he would purr away and start to roll his eyes back in his head. If I stopped, he would often grab my hand with his paws and drag it to his head. He was not subtle.

Jackson died on Friday, March 20th, 2015 after making our home a little happier for five-and-a-half years. We lost our first cat, Mascka, back in November of 2014, and with Jackson dying in March, we lost our cats that liked to snuggle. We still have four cats, and they are good company. But, I, with Meredith, miss my tiger kitty.

Rest in peace, Jackson kitty!