[Photo by Josh Rogosin]
EVG reader thomkat, an East Village resident since 1980, shared this piece about Jake, who roamed the neighborhood for the past 11 years. "He made a lot of friends all over the East Village from Tompkins Square Park to Avenue D, mainly between 10th and 4th streets — and possibly a few enemies."
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Out the door to work one morning on 7th Street in the fall of 2006, I noticed a young and healthy looking tuxedo cat pawing at the black plastic trash bags next to the curb.
Obviously hungry and lost (?), he willingly accepted my offer of food. After he gobbled that down, I snapped his picture and later posted “Is This Your Cat?” flyers all over the East Village. After two weeks, when no claims had surfaced, he was mine. The vet estimated his age to be a year and a half. He also pronounced, “That cat’s going to dominate you!” That seemed preposterous at the time, but little did I know.
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At first, Jake was constantly trying to find a way to get outside. We tried a leash – not a good idea. You’ve never seen the likes of such thrashing, clawing and biting. So I let him out into the garden adjoining our building — and over the wall he went and across the street.
Finally, realizing how street savvy he was, I installed a flap door in the bathroom window and built an 8’ wooden plank down into the garden so he had 24/7 access to come and go at will.
And come and go he did, for more than 11 years. With an implanted chip, a red stretch collar with three bells (warning to birds, etc.), a tag engraved with my cell and the explanation “I can jump over the wall and go inside by myself” — and of course, regular visits to the vet (usually the result of cat fights), he survived many a close scrape.
That first summer, he came home with a long cut on this tail. The vet took pains to save it and Jake was confined to the apartment sporting an Elizabethan collar and a heavy cast on his tail for 30 days. But alas, the tail could not be revived so he lost a little over half its length. (My son who lives down on 1st Street called him “Stumpy”).
He truly lived up to the reputation of his namesake — Jake, the handsome and rowdy lady killer from the book I was currently reading, "Lonesome Dove," a cowboy who was always riding off, being chased and getting into trouble.
Jake’s regular hangouts were the many East Village Gardens gardens and parks, Tompkins Square Park being the first. Other favorites were 6BC, the Fireman’s Garden and Green Oasis on 8th Street (where the gardeners squirted him with water for pestering the resident feral cats), La Plaza on 9th Street (where he had a girlfriend named Ruby and also bothered irate gardeners who were fearful for their chickens), the Generation X, 4th Street Garden, and the LES Ecology Garden on 7th Street.
At times he would frequent the same garden for an entire summer as the "resident cat."
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Jake did not suffer fools – when certain people approached him he would move away. Dogs didn’t faze him; most gave him a wide berth. He seemed to be able to judge them from afar and was always close enough to a parked car or a fenced-in tree pit for a quick escape.
More often he wouldn’t budge and gave them a quick swat if they came too close. Sometimes he would even go after dogs if they were close to his size.
But he could charm most people — he knew how to work the block, lying on our stoop or stretched out in the middle of the sidewalk during rush hours, morning and evening, being greeted and patted by passersby — especially young girls who would sit on the stoop and leisurely pet and fawn over him.
Neighbors would often comment, “I never liked cats, but he’s great,” and “I know the woman who takes care of him over on 9th Street” (when we live on 7th ).
A few times he came home reeking of perfume. Traitor! And he was obviously overweight, fed by well-meaning neighbors or scouting out the regular offerings by the always-dependable feral cat feeders. (I confess to extra treats of low-salt turkey slices from Sunny & Annie’s in addition to his regular diet.)
Most days after work when I reached the corner of 7th and B, three short blasts on a dog whistle would bring him bounding up the street to walk home with me for dinner. And if he still hadn’t come home after the dinner hour, I would go searching for him, making the rounds of his usual haunts with the dog whistle.
One evening after about an hour I gave up and was walking back home on Avenue C and heard his meow. He was trapped on a fire escape on the second floor of a building and must have heard me whistle on 6th Street, then spotted me walking below. No buzzer system, so I waited for someone to open the door, and went up to the front apartment – they had let him in as well as out the window and were so absorbed in TV, had forgotten him. Finally I had to realize that, nocturnal in nature, he would usually stay out all night, still always a concern.
Over the last few years Jake became much more domesticated and affectionate, and actually once in a while would rub against my legs (!) – and he loved having his stomach massaged. He would jump up on the bed, lie flat on his stomach like a sphinx with his head down and I would massage under his stomach in time with his breath and extremely loud purring. And late nights we might go for walks, one following the other, taking our time. He also acquired a fascination for car license tags – would sniff one after the other – I always wondered what he learned from those sniffs. And often he would “mark” the tags — embarrassing when the owner was there and fuming.
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However, 11 years later, in February of this year, Jake began to seem off his game and would go through spells of not being able to keep his food down. After several visits to the vet, he was diagnosed with an inoperable, malignant, abdominal tumor and given only a few weeks to live back in April.
I inquired if there was any way to make him more comfortable and the vet said steroids would help, so he began to receive house calls for steroid shots at home. It worked like magic for over a couple of months. And we tried to make the best of it – he mostly stayed outside, we took lots of walks and he had all the favorite foods and stomach massages he wanted.
But he was definitely slowing down, and last week he slept almost all of the time in our garden, moving and eating very little, to the point that it became obvious he was not at all happy and most certainly in pain. So the vet came and we eased him out of this life at home on Saturday, July 29.
I — and I think some others — will miss him terribly.
