Jadoo, the Hero

In her astral life Jadoo has stayed with me and given me all the affection of an earthly pet. Once she aroused me from a deep sleep to warn of the dangers of an overheated stove that would have exploded in minutes.

At the time I was living on a houseboat on Lake Union, near Seattle, Washington. Jadoo had passed on many years before, but she had come back in the astral body to keep me company in those bachelor days.

On another occasion Jadoo was responsible for letting me know that somebody was lying in wait with the intention of robbing me.

Several years ago when I lived in Washington, D.C., I was returning home from a late evening engagement. I had parked the car several blocks from my apartment and was walking home when Jadoo suddenly appeared and blocked my way. A few tiny whistles and mews proved that something was wrong. She wouldn’t let me pass, but forced me to take a side street. Nearing the apartment building I saw what she was doing, for a man was running up the street toward me from a corner where the lights were dim. If I had gone the regular way, he would have committed robbery. I got into the apartment building just in time, thanks to Jadoo’s help.

Jadoo is visible at times, but more frequently she is apt to lie beside me on the couch, and she often rubs against my legs. Many times she has wakened me by hopping on the bed and curling against my feet for a night’s sleep.

I do not see her in many cases, but I feel the impact of her weight alighting on the bed and her fur against my flesh. All evidence shows that she is around constantly.

Jadoo’s Whistle

Jadoo is recognized by the whistle for which she was famous as a world-traveled cat, a sort of tinny sound that is similar to those penny whistles kids used to get as prizes from Cracker Jack boxes.

It was this sound that often frightened people who used to visit. They could not understand what it was, nor did I try to explain, for the explanation would have seemed so silly that it would have appeared that I was off my rocker.

Her whistle was created by a harelip Jadoo had in her physical life. She had always made this goofy, little whistle at ships as they passed the tugboat in the New Orleans harbor where she had lived before I inherited her.

Cats usually have little use for water except for that found in goldfish bowls. But Jadoo loved the sea more than Moby Dick or Captain Bligh. Sometimes I felt that she would have been a good navigator if that harelip had crooked another way for vocal sounds.

Everybody on the New Orleans waterfront knew Jadoo. Captain Jeffry had picked her off a South American banana boat from a crew member. For a little while she lived aboard his tug for it had lots of sea motion going down the delta to pick up ships heading for the Crescent City.

She could signal the approach of a steamer entering the port of New Orleans by the way she would try to imitate the ship’s whistle with her own tinny, little sound. Jadoo was acquainted with all the shipping line vessels by just the sound of their whistles.

The Gift of a World-Traveling Cat

During a trip one summer to New Orleans, on the Delta Queen, a Mississippi river packet, I inherited Jadoo from the old tugboat captain. It was a delightful gift for a boy to have a world-traveling cat that could also whistle.

She became a fast friend when she learned that I was willing to take her on voyages. . . . We shipped everywhere possible to continue my studies in the spiritual and religious fields, although at times I had to earn our board and keep across the sea to some foreign port and back again.

Though it is generally an unwritten law among seafaring men that animals are not allowed aboard ships, Jadoo was given special privileges. She provided a certain amount of relief from the monotony of being at sea with her silly whistling and antics.

I soon learned, however, that Jadoo could do out-of-body projection. Often when in port a few of the crew members and I would go ashore for a few hours liberty and Jadoo would make an appearance and follow us everywhere. Then I found out that Jadoo had been also with the other crew members left aboard the ship. Jadoo was being in two places at the same time.

After a while it became common to witness this sort of phenomenon. When I was traveling in the other planes she often accompanied me, as if just for a lark.

Jadoo’s Journey Continues

Finally I returned home to the small southern town on the Mississippi where only an occasional riverboat put in for repairs or to deliver heavy equipment and oil. I probably lingered ashore too long for her.

One day Jadoo disappeared. I heard later that she had gone back to sea, probably because, in her estimation, riverboats were small potatoes for whistling at, and landlubbers much too tame.

Occasionally Jadoo would appear in her astral body to let me know that all was well. Word would come back from somebody who had seen her aboard a tramp steamer in some foreign port. Then came the evening when she came back astrally to announce that all of her nine lives had been used up, and that she would be hereafter in astral heaven.

Jadoo was buried at sea with full honors, which was deserving of her independence and love of the sea.

It was, I thought, the closing of the book on Jadoo’s worldly life. But recently, in a change of residence to a remote waterfront place where the surf pounds heavily day and night, a solid black, half-Siamese female was sitting on the breakwater staring at . . . me. It has become friendly and it hangs around the house quite frequently. Can this cat be Jadoo reincarnated?

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—Illustration by Julie Olson