- Jude was always with Hayden and I during night feedings. I would joke that Jude loved being petted so much that he would notice I was awake in the middle of the night and say to me (for some reason in an Italian accent), ‘well, if you have to be up anyway you might as well make use of that hand that is just laying there. Pet me. Pet me.’
- A couple of times while Hayden was feeding, Jude would fit himself onto the Boppy (breastfeeding pillow) behind Hayden. Not lots of room for a cat his size, but that was Jude!
- When I would feed Hayden in the rocking chair, Jude would jump up and lay on my lap behind Hayden, similar to how he would lay on the Boppy. He also would jump up onto the top of the back of the chair while I rocked and continuously balance himself on there by readjusting himself with every rock.
- He loved laying on our pillows next to our heads at night and would always step on my hair, for which he always got told off. There were times too where he would sleep in between John and I like a person.
- That cat was ALWAYS purring! He would purr just thinking that there was a chance he might get petted, even if no one was touching him.
- He loved ’shower time.’ You could say ‘Jude, shower time’ and he would run to the bathroom where he would wait while I showered and then get loads of petting afterwards. (Less since Hayden was born – now it’s an exercise in how fast I can get ready!)
- He loved laying behind things. If you put a suitcase down with the top open it was only a matter of time before he would crawl behind it. Same with a laundry basket, a bag or box — anything he could crawl behind or under. I got Lucy a little doggy bed from a garage sale recently and Jude would work his way under it all the time.
- He would always meow before he jumped up onto something. We said he was announcing his jumping intentions.
- He loved laying on remote controls for some reason. We have a big couch, and Jude would come lay on it with us but he would always lay on top of whichever remotes were laying on the couch. All that room and he would want the space that was already occupied!
- We had found him sitting on my car roof a few times when he was outside and the garage was open. A couple of weeks ago John found that Jude had actually jumped from the car roof onto the open garage door and was laying on it!
- We would be downstairs and hear commotion upstairs. Jude would be the only one unaccounted for. I don’t know what would trigger it, but he would get into ‘kitten fit’ mode and run around so fast that we could hear him through the ceiling!
- He loved playing with fishing rod cat toys. We could dangle a feather from one of those toys and he would chase it round and round until he was panting to catch his breath and would have to lie down.
These are some of the things he did in our house in England.
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He would go into the guest room and crawl under the duvet. You’d walk in and just see a lump in the bed. Touch the lump and – tada! – it would purr!
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He would jump (first meow a few times, then eventually jump) up onto our (pretty tall!) wardrobe and sleep. We had cat scratches down the side of it (luckily not really in site) from this habit.
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Our windows had a top and bottom half, and the top half swung out. When the window was open he would jump onto the bottom half and sit there crouched down. Abbey did this too and sometimes they were naughty and would go onto the outside sill. This always made visitors nervous that they were going to jump or fall out. He was hanging out on the bottom part of the window the morning he was being flown to America to live and he fell off the window, down two stories onto our concrete patio. LUCKILY he hardly had a scratch on him, once we found him afterwards. We didn’t know where he’d gone, we were searching around outside, but he had immediately run into the house through the cat flap and was hiding under a chair. Not a great start to what was bound to be one of the cats most stressful days of their lives!
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He went through a period of peeing on our bed at night which luckily didn’t last very long. But one night he peed on the bed and tried to bury it as cats do. In the process he flicked peed onto John’s face!
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He and Abbey both loved sheet changing time. We would shake out the sheets to put them on the bed, and they would both jump all over them and attack the sheets as they moved.
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In that house we had a shower cubicle type thing with sliding glass doors. Jude would be on top of the toilet, meow a few times, and then jump onto the top of the shower doors while we were showering. There wasn’t loads of room between the top of those doors and the ceiling, and it didn’t make for a relaxing shower to have a big cat with all his claws intact balancing above you!
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When he was younger when I would hold him he would climb up onto my shoulders and lay across the back of my neck like a collar.
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He and Abbey would both climb up on top of our cabinets in the kitchen and sleep.
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UPDATE — I was putting on my makeup this morning and couldn’t believe I had forgotten to write about Jude and the makeup sponges. I use makeup sponges to put on foundation, and for some reason Jude was drawn to these like a moth to a flame. A sponge gets used for about a week or so before it’s ready to be tossed out, and if Jude was around when I put on my makeup he would hop up onto the counter and throw his head into my makeup bag in search of the sponge. If it was ready to be thrown I would let him take it. He would grab it, jump off the counter, and play with it similarly to how he did with the cotton buds (see John’s post). If it wasn’t time for the sponge to be thrown yet I would have to hide it in a drawer while I did my makeup to avoid it being taken by the little bandit; otherwise he was known to sneak off with it. 🙂
He was so loving, fun, funny, docile, and sweet. As our friend Helen described him, he was a gentle giant. We were so lucky to have him. I feel he was cheated out of 10 years or more, and likewise we were cheated of that time with him, but I am so grateful for the four+ years we did get with him. I miss him like crazy.
Hayden and Layla's Place 