Captain Jack Brandenburg

Our story of how we came to adopt Captain Jack was always a funny one. My husband had promised our 5 year old daughter that when we moved to Colorado and bought our house, she could have a kitty cat. She wanted an orange kitty cat like her grandma had because he was so sweet. When we went to the Humane Society shelter in Colorado Springs, there was a little orange striped kitten. We went to the visiting room and they brought the kitten in and put it down and shut the door. That is when the cat went crazy. It started hissing, shrieking, bouncing off the walls and spitting. The shelter people came in and took it right out. My daughter no longer wanted an orange kitty after that. We continued walking around, looking in cages when she came to a cage with a beautiful sad looking cat laying in it. The cage was at her height and she and that kitty made eye contact and she wanted to see him. Back to the visiting room we went. They brought him in and set him down and he immedietly jumped up in my lap and we all began petting him. That was it. We were all in love. That was May 2006. He was about 10 months old and already a good size Russian blue with some siamese and a little maine coon in him.

We brought him home and she named him Captain Jack. We spent the next almost 13 1/2 years with Captain Jack. He had his own personality. He probably only ever sat on my lap 5 more times after that initial meeting in all those years, but that was okay. He sat beside me on the couch, or on the arm of the chair and slept at the foot of the bed. Sometimes just out of arms reach. He didn’t like closed doors. He would headbutt and meow outside of our doors in the morning until we got up to let him in. He would climb up in my bed and take his paw and tap me about the head and face until I woke up. My 4 legged alarm clock. He was an opera singer too. Between 1 and 4am, we would sometimes be treated to his singing. Always in the hallway of our house because the acoustics were better. He was a creature of habit. He liked one particular brand of food, dry, not wet. He liked one brand of litter for his box and he liked to sit in a dining room chair next to the front window to watch the birds, squirrels and people go by.

There have been nothing but tears since the day my daughter, husband and I laid our heads on him and petted him and told him we loved him as he left us. The pain has been unbearable. Everyplace I look in my home, I see him. It was like losing a part of ourselves. Our confidant, our buddy, our furry gray baby. I realize we needed him more than he probably needed us. We love you, will always love you and miss you desperately Jack. Until we meet again and can rub your little ears and scratch your back and hear that purr again, we’ll be looking forward to that day. Love, Mom, Dad and Brianne