Trooper the cat has a special place in his heart for a woman who is 96 years old. Sarah Whaley is a writer.
While flipping a property in 2014, Alexis Hackney and her family discovered Trooper when they heard her meowing from the basement and went to check.
“She was in the wall,” Hackney told The Dodo, “and my mom and sister had to fetch a sledgehammer and tear down the sheetrock to extract her.” “She was around 2 weeks old at the time. Her pupils were dilated and her eyes were barely open.”
They couldn’t discover Trooper’s mother, so they brought the little kitten to their Tallahassee, Florida, home, which they lived with Hackney’s grandmother, Whaley.
Hackney explained, “My grandma actually lived with us for 18 years.” “When my sisters and I were younger, she moved down here to babysit us. She simply sort of lingered. She was unquestionably an important member of our family. “She was the matriarch,” says the narrator.
Whaley not only liked her grandkids, but she also enjoyed the household animals. Trooper, in particular, became a personal friend of hers.
“She’d bottle-feed her and sit there and chat to her, telling her how lovely and precious she is,” Hackney recalled. “Trooper is the type of cat that only has one person in her life, and that person was unquestionably my grandma.”
While everyone could see how much Trooper loved Whaley and how much Whaley loved Trooper, the family didn’t realize how close they were until Whaley fell ill.
“Around Christmas [last year], my grandma started going downhill more, and we started seeing her [Trooper] being there all the time,” Hackney added.
Trooper slept on Whaley’s bed most of the time, but she also brought gifts from around the home.
“She was never the sort to pick up toys and move them about the house or anything,” Hackney said, “but when my grandma couldn’t walk around as much as she used to, she’d bring anything to her – whatever she’d find on the floor, like socks or a straw.” “As she became ill and more, she increased the quantity of belongings she brought with her. She’d simply go into my brother’s room and grab his socks, carrying them downstairs and laying them on the floor.”
Whaley would have panic attacks now and then, and Trooper would rush to her side to console her.
“Trooper would rush in and jump on the bed, and she’d just start touching her and feeling her, and she’d calm down,” Hackney said. “I believe having Trooper there was extremely comforting for my grandma as she started coming to the stage where she couldn’t communicate anymore.”
Nothing appeared to frighten Trooper away from Whaley’s hospital bed.
“She became really bewildered once my grandma was going through the process of passing away,” Hackney added. “Trooper was always by her side — always there — and she’d strike her or squeeze her too hard by accident, and Trooper never fought back. She would just hop out of bed, wait for my grandmother to settle down, and then jump back into bed with her. It would have been over if we had done it. We would have been a bloodbath, but she adored my grandmother and never, ever scratched, bit, or otherwise harmed her.”
Trooper was heartbroken when Whaley died in March, just days before her 97th birthday.
“She didn’t want to be in the same room as my grandmother’s body,” Hackney said. “I’d taken her in there to show her that Grandma wouldn’t be returning… Because if they don’t know, they’ll go looking for them, and I wanted her to know that our grandmother is no longer with us. However, she bolted and hid behind my parents’ bed. And she stopped eating when they took my grandmother’s body. She’s not a particularly noisy cat, but she was constantly sobbing as she walked around the house.”
Trooper is doing much better now, according to Hackney, but she still enters Whaley’s room and leaves socks and other items behind.
