If you don’t have a pet, you might not understand how loyal and attached they can become to their owners. While dogs and cats show their feelings differently, they both truly love their humans. Alexis Hackney of Tallahassee, Florida, is one of those people that understands this.
Alexis and her family are house flippers, so when they heard a cat meowing from inside the wall during a flip in 2014, they started looking to find the source of the meow.
Alexis remembers the first time she saw Trooper. She was in the wall and her mom and sister had to use a sledgehammer to bust the sheetrock to get to her. The kitten was about two weeks old and her eyes were barely open.
They looked for her mother, but couldn’t find her. So they brought the kitten home to live with them. Also living with them was Alexis’s grandmother, Sarah Whaley. The kitten immediately fell in love with Sarah.
If you don’t have a pet, you might not understand how loyal and attached they can become to their owners. While dogs and cats show their feelings differently, they both truly love their humans. Alexis Hackney of Tallahassee, Florida, is one of those people that understands this.
Alexis and her family are house flippers, so when they heard a cat meowing from inside the wall during a flip in 2014, they started looking to find the source of the meow.
Alexis remembers the first time she saw Trooper. She was in the wall and her mom and sister had to use a sledgehammer to bust the sheetrock to get to her. The kitten was about two weeks old and her eyes were barely open.
They looked for her mother, but couldn’t find her. So they brought the kitten home to live with them. Also living with them was Alexis’s grandmother, Sarah Whaley. The kitten immediately fell in love with Sarah.
Grandma Sarah adored her children and grandchildren, and the cat too. She would bottle-feed the tiny baby and sit there and talk to her telling her how cute and sweet she was. Alexis says Trooper was a one person kind of cat, and her person was Sarah.
Although the family knew the woman and cat loved each other, they didn’t know exactly how much until Alexis’s grandmother became sick. She started going downhill around Christmas last year and Trooper was with her all the time.
Trooper would sleep with her and collect things off the floor to give to her human companion as gifts. This behavior wasn’t typical for Trooper. Before she never picked up things and moved them around the house. But now she would bring Sarah socks, a straw, or anything she could find.
As Sarah got sicker, Trooper began bringing even more gifts. When Sarah would have a panic attack, the cat would rush to her side to comfort her. Sarah would start petting Trooper and immediately calm down.
Nothing appeared to rattle Trooper, even when Sarah started going through the process of passing away and became disoriented. Sarah would sometimes squeeze her too hard, or accidentally hit her, but Trooper would never fight back. She’d just wait for Sarah to calm down.
Alexis says you could see how much Trooper loved Sarah by the way she looked at her. “It just broke your heart to see all this pain in her eyes,” said Alexis.
When Sarah died in March, Trooper was inconsolable. Without her 96-year-old companion, she was devastated. Alexis says she took Trooper to see Sarah’s body so she would understand that she wasn’t there anymore, but Trooper didn’t want to be around the body.
Alexis says that Trooper stopped eating, and although she’s typically not very vocal, she would walk around the house and cry all the time. Thankfully, now that time has passed, Trooper is doing better. She still leaves gifts in Sarah’s old room though.
“You can tell that she definitely misses Grandma,” says Alexis. What a touching story. The family is lucky to have such a faithful feline friend like Trooper. If you agree, please share this story with your family and friends.
