Sadness

On Saturday, May 1st, I learned that a Cat Blogosphere acquaintance had died.

Jackie, from Two Devon Cats, otherwise known as Eric and Flynn, passed away; I can assume only that it was as a result of the cancer that she had been battling for some years. This event was a shock to me, as I know it was to others who knew Jackie, knew of her, and read her blog, especially since she had posted the latest entry in that blog just the day before. Indeed, she had been sending out e-mail updates on her health to all those who wanted to receive them - I did, and I suspect so did many - and I had received the latest only on Tuesday, April 28th. Though she wrote of the treatment for her cancer continuing to be hard on her, there was optimism in the e-mail, and no hint that it would be her last update.

Jackie and her husband, Ivor, loved their cats, of whom they had a number through the years. I know in detail of only two, the subjects of their blog. Eric and Flynn were orange and white brothers, who came to live at Allern Farm as kittens. They were outside/inside farm cats, and loved to patrol their domain with their mum and dad. Eric especially seemed to have a bond with Ivor, while Flynn was the more daring one, the better hunter and tree-climber. But they did almost everything together, and it must have been hard on Flynn when his brother died in, I think, 2010. Flynn survived him by seven years, and it’s difficult to think that he’s been gone for nine years already. Since then, Jackie published a weekly entry celebrating the cats’ memories, and I loved reading about them in retrospect. I know from the many comments each post received that scores of other people loved it as much as I.

I am not sure how long Jackie and Ivor had been married; from the photographs they shared with their readers, I think they must have wed in the late 1970s or early ‘80s. They had been together a lifetime, I know. I never read of any other family they may have had, but they had many friends with whom they visited in their occasional travels. Jackie wrote of those journeys on another blog; one entry featured a story that may have been partly supernatural, and was certainly creepy. Jackie didn’t give an opinion; she just wrote it as it happened. (If anyone can point me to that blog, I would be grateful; I cannot remember how to find it.)

Jackie put up with a lot from her cancer, and I cannot leave out the effects it must have had on Ivor. Jackie defeated cancer once but, as it so treacherously does in many cases, it returned, and this time, though she fought, she did not win. It is tragic.

The Cat Blogosphere site published a tribute to Jackie, at which comments may be left (https://blog.catblogosphere.com/remembering-jackie-avery/). People may also leave comments at Eric and Flynn’s blog (https://twodevoncats.blogspot.com).

Godspeed, Jackie.