When I first met him, he was a tiny little orange thing. Just a couple weeks old. I was in college, living at home and out for a walk. He came up and meowed at me. He was all alone and without a collar, not a good sign. He seemed desperate and scared. I knew I couldn’t just take him home, we already had a bunch of cats. But he followed me insisting that I help him. I told him that if he could follow me home he could stay with me. He had a hard time keeping up with me. At 6’4”, I have a long stride and he was only a kitten. He fell behind and eventually I just picked him up and carried him the rest of the way. He seemed to know that he was safe with me. He relaxed in my arms. Now my mother is a sucker for cats. I knew that if I told her I had a stray kitty she’d tell me to get rid of it, but if she saw the stray, she’d fall under his spell. So after showing her the new kitty we agreed to ask around the neighborhood if anybody had lost him. Well we carried him down the street towards where I found him. We knocked on a few doors and asked a few people. But we had both fallen under his spell. We gave up after only a few tries, far fewer than what we had planned. So we had a new kitty and being that he was my find, I got to name him. So I named him after one of my heroes, Jackie Chan.
Jackie went missing once. He just disappeared. I got a picture of him and became a detective. I went door to door asking if anybody had seen him. The first person I asked looked at the picture and recognized him immediately, “Jackies missing?!?!”
“You mean you know him?” I asked
“Sure I know Jackie! He comes by every morning and lets me pet him and feed him”
So the next door I knock on it’s the same thing “Jackies missing ?!?!”
“You mean you know him?” I asked
“Sure I know Jackie! He comes by every day at about noon and lets me pet him and feed him”
And again on the next door it’s the same thing…”Jackies missing?!?!”
“Youe mean you know him?”
“Sure I know Jackie! He comes by every day when I get home from work and lets me
pet him and feed him”
It seems he had a little daily schedule with most of the people on the block. And even people across the street and around the corner had been blessed by occasional visits which included Jackie getting petting and feeding!
Well eventually we got a call from some kids a few blocks away. They found Jackie and fell in love with him. They had intended to keep him but the parents saw Jackies collar and our phone number on it..
Eventually I had to move out of my moms house. I had a really tough decision to make. Jackie had human friends and fans all over the neighborhood. He had a little white girlfriend nextdoor and a Siamese gal across the street. And that’s just the ones we knew about. I couldn’t tear him away from his life there, so I left him with my family. They were happy to keep him.
Its been 12 years since I found Jackie Chan. For the last year his health has been in a serious decline. Hes had digestive problems and had been loosing weight. My mother has been dutifully taking him to the vet over and over, trying all sorts of medicines and even did a daily IV drip for the poor kitty. But alas, it just hasn’t worked out. Once a very athletic and fit outdoor kitty, Jackie has lost half his body weight. Hes been looking like he just got out of kitty Auschwitz. So we had to make a tough choice. I decided that hed be better off if we sent him on his way, or as my brother put it, “murder him” It wasn’t fun but it had to be done. That was yesterday.
I don’t really believe or disbelieve in anything. But if I was a betting man, Id put money on a sort of continuation for the soul after death. Id put money on Jackie Chan being happy to see the family dog Spot who died a few years back.
A few hours after I got home from the vet, I was sitting at my computer checking emails, and I saw a cat sitting on a chair out of the corner of my eye. I thought It was one of my own 2 kitties. But when I turned to look, the cat vanished. I turned back to my computer and saw the cat out of the corner of my eye again. It was Jackie! He was just lying there cleaning himself. He looked like Jackie Chan in his prime, young and healthy. But I could only see him out of the corner of my eye. When I looked directly, he vanished. But for about 20 minutes, he was there,, no question. Im not the first person to experience this. It happens all the time, with pets and people. The departed are with us whenever we think of them. In that sense, I think we are all one all the time and nothing, not even death can take that away.
