GardenFoundation
LLC
Feline Chronic Renal
Failure (CRF)
Judy J. Crawford
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GardenFoundation
LLC |
Who Was Jolie? Jolie was my Very Best Friend, Loyal Companion, Little Buddy, and Constant Shadow. She was an orange tabby with very yellow-green eyes, and developed black freckles as she aged. Her nose & paw pads were "little girl" pink. Her chin & belly were a soft white. Her fur was so soft it felt like silk, and it was very shiny, like a mirror. She had “ring tail” markings, so my husband affectionately refered to her as The Lemur. Jolie means “pretty” in French, and of course, I think she is the prettiest cat I ever saw.
I adopted Jolie from a shelter when she very young. At that time I lived in an apartment in the city, and found amusement by watching the cats who lived across the street follow their elderly owners around the yard. It was especially fun to watch as the cats "supervised" while the old lady gardened. It was like a parade every time one of the people left the house. Sadly, the elder gentleman died, and the house was sold to the city for demolition because his widow couldn't keep it up. I saw the adult children of the family come back to the area from time to time, looking for the cats, but they couldn’t find them all. To my dismay, I soon realized that the black cat left behind was pregnant. She had the kittens on or around October 4th of that year. Soon they were following her around in a cats-only version of the parade that I used to see when the humans lived there.
Around this time I had become convinced I needed to have an animal companion in my life, despite my apartment manager’s rules against it. I had been making the rounds from shelter to shelter, looking for a special connection, but found no one. One day I came home from work and saw, to my horror, that the bulldozers had arrived, and the entire house was completely smashed to the ground. The old lady’s garden was gone, and I was so worried about the mother cat & her babies! For a few days I watched to see if there was any cat activity at the site, but they were all gone.
Soon I had a dream that I was standing in a field, calling for a kitty, and a little orange one came bounding out of the grass and into my arms, purring up a storm. The next day, Friday afternoon, I went to the local shelter where I had been numerous times, again hoping to find a friend. This time things were different. As I went in the cat room I saw, out of the corner of my eye, an orange kitten in the top cage put both arms through the bars and start reaching for me. Ignoring it, I slowly walked from cage to cage, looking each cat in the eye and asking if he or she was my special friend. No one responded. Finally, I reached the cage with the kitten that was pawing for me. As soon as our eyes locked I knew – here was my friend! She grabbed my finger with her paw, pulled it inside the bars, and began licking it. My heart immediately fell in love with her, and I think she fell in love with me at that moment, too, because she began miaowing like crazy. She tried to get through the bars, and was becoming frantic. So, I went to the shelter employees and told them I’d found someone. We went back in the room, and this little kitten was making such a ruckus, crying and flinging herself against the bars, trying to get to me! When the employee opened the cage, she launched herself through the air, and landed in my arms, exactly as what happened in my dream. She put her nose next to my ear, and started purring. She never stopped purring in all the time we were together.
As it turned out, she WAS one of the kittens from across the street. The bulldozers had buried her & her family, killing all except a brother (who I didn’t adopt). They had been buried alive for at least a day before the construction workers found them. The workers rushed all the cats to the shelter, but only two lived. Poor Jolie had so much dirt packed in her ears; it was MONTHS before I was able to get it all out. She was quite deaf in the beginning, and every time she shook her head dirt clods would go flying. Every time she sneezed dirty snot went flying! UGH! I used up a lot of Q-tips getting all that crud out! But, despite the fact that not only were her ears packed with dirt, and that dirt was totally ground into her coat & skin, I thought she was the prettiest cat ever! Hence, her name.
How Jolie & I found each other
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