Tribute to Tiger

Well, yesterday was a sad day in the Cooper house. Jace had an appointment at the allergy clinic. He did not have the full range of tests done yet (we are waiting a year for him to acclimate to this area's allergens), but he did have a few critical ones tested. The good news is, he seems to have outgrown his egg allergy, and he also showed up negative for dust mite allergy (which was positive last time and a huge stress factor for me). So he was negative for both eggs and dust this time, but he seems to have developed a new allergy. This time he was positive for allergy to cats. This was quite a blow, and Jace does not understand yet. We are at a loss, Tiger has been like Jace's brother. We got him when Jace tested negative for the allergy last time, and he has been a great source of comfort, stability and companionship for Jace. Everyone who has met Tiger knows, he is a remarkable cat. This first picture shows Tiger equally as excited as Jace about his new train set. Tiger is always in the business, thinking he's a person, ready to play with Jace's new toys.

This next picture is one of Jace and Tiger when we first got him.

This is how they looked until Tiger grew too big for Jace to carry around. When we initially got
Tiger, he was an outdoor kitten, only a couple months old. Jace ran up to the kittens, and, of course, they all scattered - all except Tiger. He walked right up to Jace and even let Jace pick him up, on their first meeting! We knew this was the cat for us, and Jace held him in his carseat with him the whole ride home. Tiger spent endless hours being toted around by Jace until he simply got too heavy.

Tiger grew pretty quickly - I was amazed really - I thought Jace grew fast, but Tiger was out of the baby stage even more quickly than Jace! Here is a picture of him four months later, when Thomas's parents and brother came out to visit for Christmas. Here he is, napping alongside their dog (it wasn't exactly the Milo and Otis situation that it looks like - it took a couple of days to get to this point, but they ended up being pretty tolerant of one another). This picture is appropriate considering in many ways, Tiger is a lot like a dog. He likes to lick (that's really an understatement). When he was a kitten, and we would leave him home while we went to school, when we got home, he would stand at our feet and meow until we bent down and let him lick our hands for a couple of minutes.

Here he is last Christmas. He likes to be right in the middle of everything - including the Christmas tree. :-) He has always been curious and right in the mix. When I come home from grocery shopping, he likes to stand right up in the refridgerator and watch the groceries being unloaded. He greets all newcomers to our home immediately with an ample amount of licking. He plays with Jace like a brother would, they chase one another, wrestle, etc. They also get mad at each other like siblings. :-) When we put up the tree at Christmas, he wasn't content with just knocking off the ornaments and playing with them like other cats do (although he did his share of this too), he had to be up in the tree, taking naps and resting on the branches, looking out at the world from what I'm sure he considered to be a pretty great hiding spot.

Here is Tiger in one of his many crazy positions. He is rarely content to curl up the way you imagine cats doing. He chooses, instead, to sleep sprawled out on his back with his paws out in the air, or in a couch or chair at an incline like this, so that he is actually sleeping partially upside down. He's also big on textures (which I wouldn't have thought considering he is covered in softer fur than anything we own) and he loves to sleep on the mink or velux blankets. He has slept in our bed with us since the very first night we had him. This surprised me initally (since he was used to sleeping outside), but the very first night we had him, he meowed at our bed until we picked him up and let him sleep with us, and he has slept in our bed, at our feet, ever since.

We don't know what we are going to do yet (other than miss him desperately). We are in the process of trying to find him a good home, but it's hard when we don't know very many people here yet. He has been a wonderful pet, we all love him and will miss him, but we have to do what is best for Jace's health, there is simply no other option.