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Parker and Jake



On September 2nd I lost my dog Parker very suddenly to a cancerous tumor that bled out in his abdomen. For those of you who follow this blog Parker was featured in a number of posts but most recently in a fun blog about my office affair. If you are like me, your pets are like kids. Even after I had a two legged child of my own, my dog was still very much my four legged child. So to have him pass away so suddenly has left a real hole in my heart.
Parker was a special dog that was famous in his own right. He was featured on an Animal Planet "adoption story" called Cooper, he was in Newsweek, USA today, The Times Dispatch and was in TV commercials for the Richmond SPCA because he was so well trained and represented the family dog so well. He was special to me and everyone who met him.
So while this is extremely sad for me and my family, it is in my nature to find the positive in any bad situation. About a week before Parker's sudden passing, I brought home a foster cat named Jake. Jake, or meathead as my son and husband calls him(he has a big head), has been a lifesaver to me. Jake has FIV. We would normally not place a cat with FIV but he was my favorite cat at the shelter, so I decided to bring him home and foster him while I find him a new home.
I must be honest, I love cats and have my favorites but I am not a cat owner, I foster instead. The only other cat I owned was again an FIV positive cat that we found living under our house in Richmond that we brought into the house and kept until she passed. But Jake is a little different from most cats. I call him my dog-cat. He begs for food, he meows when I come home to greet me, he rolls over to get his belly rubbed, he greets me in the morning and is always happy to sit on my lap and purr. He really is the perfect cat.
Fostering means so much to the animal you are caring for, but in this case I think the cat helped me out far more than I helped him out. So yes, Jake is up for adoption. As much as I appreciate his personality I can't keep him, this is only a temporary situation until we find him the right home. I like fostering cats and would like to continue to do so but if I have Jake I can't.
So here is a run down on Jake. Jake is some kind of Maine coon mix. His head is very large and he is lovely. FIV is an immune deficiency that a cat can live a very long life with. He is very loving, is fine with my 4 year old son, very litterbox trained, never destructive, not a fan of dogs but has lived with one but most importantly, he is content to lay on your lap all night or on the floor at your feet. He loves people. He would have to be an only cat or only live with another cat with FIV and he should never be an outside cat without supervision. If you are interested in Jake please contact me directly at makena@lynchburghumane.org and we can make arrangements for you to visit with Jake. I do suggest that you go on line and do research on FIV. Here is a link to one such article: http://www.bestfriends.org/theanimals/petcare/cats_fiv.cfm
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