Jezery --- what I really wanted to name a cat; name source is an alternate spelling of a minor character from Anne McCaffrey's Crystal Singer
Nicknames --- Jez, JezJez, J-J-J-J-J-J-J-Jez, Jezzy-Jez, Pillbug, Idiot, Blockhead, and Jezzy (my mom calls her that)
Age --- 10 (October 2008)

Jealousy, thy name is Jezery. I'm her human and she's not going to share me with anybody except Tasha (and if Tasha hadn't been there first I'm not sure she'd allow even that much). She has a blind intolerance that reminds me of Shadwell in Good Omens. She'll only cuddle with people who have long hair. She hates to cuddle unless it's by her choice, and then you can't get rid of her. She likes to lie on my chest and clean out my ears; ear wax is apparently delicious. She's a head-bonker, and particularly loves to stand on something and have me scratch her back while she bends her head back to bonk my leaning forward forehead. I love her pin-striped pattern, especially when she curls into a ball and looks like a pillbug; that's when I must bury my face in her fur and she gets all grumpy for my disturbing her nap. She leaps before she looks (though not quite as much as the first few years), and has had some spectacular mishaps like running full-tilt into people's legs (and walls, and refrigerators), missing jumps to the top of the shower, and falling in the toilet in that split second when the lid's open. She's a whiner... food, put me down, anything. But she's just as strong in the purring department. She's very leggy and has a super-long tail that looks adorable when she wraps it around herself. She's ten as of this October 2008 edit. I got her from animal control in Illinois; I later volunteered there, and I'm glad I got Jez when I did, because she was just about due for a euthanasia sweep. She likes to sleep on my pillow or in the crook of my knee. When she's like that and Tasha's curled in the crook of my stomach, I can't move. She's the only cat in the house with a reasonable attitude toward food: when she's hungry, she's hungry, but she doesn't overeat and if things went her way she'd just eat a little bit here and there. Unfortunately that's not possible with Quinn and Tasha around, and I have to watch to make sure she gets her fair share.

Below the pictures is my 10-year anniversary ramble for Jezery.

August 2, 2008: 10 years ago yesterday, I adopted a twerpy little gray tabby cat.

I always wanted to get a second cat. Tasha (despite her opinion on the matter) was never intended to be an only cat, but I wanted to only get one at the time I adopted her. And when I started thinking it was about time to get another, my apartment in Bowling Green only allowed one pet. So when I started planning my move to Illinois following graduate school, I started planning to get a second cat. My boyfriend Matt had moved there ahead of me (we were getting separate apartments), so when I drove out a week before graduation to sign my new lease, I looked up the animal shelters and decided to go look. Just look. I was fully intending to get a cat as soon as I moved, but I still had a week to go. No, I was just going to look.

Matt was with me when I went to the animal control facility in Aurora. It's not as nice as a humane society... much less interaction with the animals, and no real effort made to find out about them. They were nothing but cage numbers, sex, and approximate age. Jezery was in cage number three. I remember going through the entire room and carefully reading what little information there was on the cards before I tried getting any of them out. But Jezery was the first one I went back to, since she fit the general specs of what I was after: teenaged female. She was listed at six months, but given the date she arrived was three weeks before, she was probably more like seven months.

When I took her out of the cage, she scrambled up and over my shoulder and right over to Matt, who was standing behind me. And licked his nose. Yeah, he was won over pretty fast. :> I wanted to make sure, though. I liked her best that day. The next day, I was on my own when I went to go get the lease signed and get my key. But I couldn't stop thinking about the little tabby cat. What I was most worried about was getting a cat that would get along with Tasha. (Har har har.) I went back to animal control and got her out and sat on a chair with her for a long time. She reached up and swiped at my glasses to pull them off at one point, and scratched the glass a bit. I finally decided that I didn't want to wait to adopt her, because who knew what would happen in a week. So I put in the application -- and unlike at a humane society, there wasn't much of a waiting period before acceptance -- went to buy a new cat carrier, came back, and I had my new cat.

In retrospect, I am so happy that I made the decision to adopt her then and not wait. Unless someone else had adopted her very soon, she would have been dead by the end of that week. After I completed the move, I volunteered at that shelter for two months. There was a non-profit group that operated out the animal control facility, trying to do what they could to give the animals attention and care. But they didn't have any jurisdiction outside of cleaning cages and the like. I worked with cats and rehabbed them to be social and friendly... but about once a month animal control would do a sweep and kill all animals that had been there more than a week, even if the cages weren't near full. Several cats I had worked with a lot and had seen make a lot of progress got caught in a sweep. It wasn't scheduled, it was just when they decided to do one. But since Jezery had been there three weeks before I found her, I'm pretty sure they would have done a sweep and she'd have been gone if I'd waited. I couldn't bear working there any more after the cats I cared for so much were just swept away. I moved to a humane society that was further away but had a no-kill policy.

I knew I was going to name her Jezery. It was my number one choice of a cat name. Tasha would have been named Jezery except she came with a name that she knew and I decided to let her keep it. (I'm glad it worked out that way, since I think each of their names fits them well.) But Jez was just female tabby in cage number three. So she got the name. I'd found it in an Anne McCaffrey book years before and used it for one of my first firelizards on Dragonsfire... the firelizard was named in 1994, and I got Jez in 1998... so I'd been waiting to name a cat Jezery for four years. I accidentally dropped an 'e' when I named the firelizard, but later decided I liked Jezery better than Jezerey. I can't explain why it just screamed cat name to me, but it did.

Of course, when I introduced Jezery and Tasha, after picking Jezery specifically because I hoped they would get along... Jezery was the first one to hiss. They never got along. They didn't do full out fights, but it was pretty clear that neither of them wanted the other to be around. But they tolerated each other. I had to take Jezery back to Ohio with me for the week until I graduated and made the move, and during the load-up they got dumped together in one room to be out of the way. I think that probably made them deal with each other, even if with dislike. When we did the drive, Matt drove the moving truck with Jezery in the cab. She kept trying to lick his ears. She liked Matt a lot. It's funny to think back to that now, given how thoroughly she considers me her human.

Above all toys, Jezery was fascinated with sticks. She would steal straws out of drinks -- for years I had to be careful of putting down drinks with straws, because she always found them. I had leftover Halloween lollipops that first year with her, and when Matt and I were sitting on the couch one evening, he had a lollipop in his mouth. She snuck up behind him on the back of the couch and very carefully tried to reach around and take it out of his mouth. He swiveled it to the other side of his mouth and she merely went around the back of his head and tried again. At which point we collapsed with laughter.

She's always liked sleeping under the covers with me. She and Tasha figured out that as long as I was in between them and they couldn't see other... they could tolerate some kind of close proximity. So Jezery would dart under the covers and get behind my knees while Tasha would tuck herself in the crook of my stomach. Made it a bit hard to turn over. Still does, actually, since they both still do that. The only time I knew them to sleep on the same side of me was when my friend Laura and I found a pregnant stray cat that I kept at my place. Once the kittens were mobile, I had seven cats sleeping with me: Tasha and Jezery on my left side, Chisa at my feet, and the four kittens balled up in a row on my right side. That made it REALLY hard to turn over.

Jezery had something of a nervous breakdown with that situation, though. She really doesn't like other cats, and the kittens really got to her. She went to live with my mom for the last couple of weeks I had the kittens. I swear she still remembers that time she was an only cat. She loved it. My mom was able to leave food out for her at all times, and she could nibble here and there as she felt like it. Since I have to control Tasha's eating, I can never leave food out.

I've had a number of cats come through my house over the years, and until Quinn they all had problems with Jezery. I think only the fact that Tasha was there first and they worked things out when Jez was pretty young is what makes that relationship tolerable. She's terrorized all other cats. With Sinead, a cat I took in for a few months when her owner moved to Ireland and then back, the hatred was mutual and I had to separate the house. I was very glad her owner moved back and could take back her cat. Chisa mostly held her own, but it wasn't a good situation for her. Luckily she is a very smart cat, and knew that buttering up my friend Derek and choosing him as her human was the best way to go... and knew that long before he gave in and decided to adopt her. When my housemate Kelli got cats, though, it was a disaster. We had to keep them completely separate and the house divided up. Jezery would chase them into the rafters to hide. To this day Nutmeg and Caliki are still spooky. When Quinn showed up, I was really leery about it. But somehow he just lets her abuse slide and he just gets out of the way without it appearing to bother him. And that seems to work. But at this point I will not get another cat until after Jezery is gone. (Not that I want more, I've got plenty!)

Jezery is a very needy cat when it comes to human attention and most especially my attention. She's most likely to try to attack Quinn right after I've put her down from a cuddle. She demands attention. I'll be typing at the keyboard and she will jump up and worm her way into my lap. If I'm eating breakfast at the kitchen table, she'll jump in my lap but completely ignore the food as she crawls up my chest to headbonk my chin and lick my ear. She's very fond of ears. She's a chest-cat. Her preferred way to cuddle is not when I'm lying down, but when I'm sitting or reclining and she can sprawl on my chest and make with the headbonks. She sleeps on my pillow a lot, and when she's feeling happy and purry can easily reach over and *bonk*. If I've been gone on a trip somewhere, the force of those happy bonks can wake me up... she's pretty hardcore about them. Zzzzzzzz *WHAM* I sometimes worry about her giving herself a concussion, but I've also decided she's done all the damage already.

Of all the cats, Jezery is in many ways the most frustrating. She's got a one-track mind, and diverting her from something is a challenge. She will run into legs as people walk, because if they're walking they're obviously going to feed her and that means she must DASH to the food dish... and if this crosses your path, she doesn't notice and she gets kicked. Sometimes she runs head-first into my legs. I've caught her really hard before with just walking, and I'm always afraid of her getting seriously hurt that way. One of my catsitters got her once and was freaked. And it's hard to predict when she's going to decide to dash, because you may be nowhere near the room where her food dish is, not even walking in that direction, and she'll suddenly run in front of you. Definitely a leap-before-looking kind of cat. When she was younger, I had problems with her jumping into the toilet in the few seconds between my standing up and getting the lid closed. She got several baths because of that, and I learned to play blocker in the bathroom. She is good with baths, though. Complains a lot, but deals without particularly struggling.

She's also INCREDIBLY whiny. Since I can't leave food out for her to nibble all day, I have to feed the cats at set times with set amounts. But Jezery won't eat her full amount in one go... and these days, even if she tries to eat a lot, she'll throw it right back up. So to make sure she gets enough to eat, I feed her pretty much any time she asks me. And some days, she asks me ALL DAY. And she complains a lot. She'll whine and complain even when she's purring up a storm and relaxed in someone's arms. My mom's figured out that slinging her to the shoulder for cuddling will shut her up, but even without that she's still relaxed and whining. Basically whenever she opens her mouth, it's to whine and complain. She sounds very grouchy even though in many ways she's the friendliest cat. She's the one who will run up to strangers and greet them. Anyone who comes into the house will find Jezery at their feet, twining through their legs, sniffing, and generally trying to find out who they are. Workmen on the floor while repairing things will find Jezery poking her head in to see what they're doing.

But I'm definitely her human. She does not like to share me, and pretty much ignores Dave unless I've been gone for several days and unless she's hungry. She's developed an occasional habit of getting me to feed her, then going upstairs and meowing at Dave until he gets up and she leads him to the food bin. She does need her cuddles in general, even though she's touchy about how she gets them from anyone but me. Unless she's in the middle of a hard nap somewhere, I can almost always count on Jezery getting in my lap when I sit down. I sometimes feel that if something absolutely horrible were to happen and I had to choose one cat to keep, I'd really need to keep Jezery because she is attached to me so much. That's a decision I intend to never have to make, though.

It doesn't feel like she's going on eleven years. Most people are surprised to learn how old she is. No, she doesn't play as much as she used to, but she's very active and looks nice and lean and healthy. I'm admittedly partial to the particular patterns of each of my cats, but I really do like Jezery's version of tabby: pinstripes that aren't thick and make her look like a pillbug when she curls in a ball, no white, short but fairly thick fur, a dollop of bronzey-cream under her chin, and super-long legs and tail. That's probably part of what makes her look younger. She's nicely conformed, but the long legs and tail I think make her look like she may still have some growing to do.

She's been in the room with me the whole time I've been writing this. Several times she's jumped into my lap for cuddling. She's demanded food several times. She's been watching birds most recently, but I just looked over at her and she looked at me and went "mraiow!" My silly, frustrating, wonderful kitty.

Tasha
Quinn
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