A very special place in Trooper the cat’s heart belongs to 96-year-old Ms. Sarah Whaley
In 2014, Alexis Hackney and her family were flipping a house when they heard Trooper meowing from the basement. They heard a noise and found the cat there.

Hackney told The Dodo, ‘She was in the wall, and my mum and sister had to get a hammer and tear down the sheetrock to extract her. She was maybe two weeks old. Her eyes weren’t even fully open.

They transported the tiny kitten to their Tallahassee, Florida, residence—where they resided with Hackney’s grandmother, Whaley—because they were unable to find Trooper’s mother.

Actually, for 18 years, my grandmother lived with us, according to Hackney. When my sisters and I were young, she came down here to watch us. She merely sort of waited. She was without a doubt an important member of our family. The matriarch was she.

Whaley appreciated the family pets in addition as her grandchildren. She developed a close friendship with Trooper in particular.

When my grandma bottle-fed her, she would sit and chat with her while praising how adorable and kind the child was, according to Hackney. Trooper is the type of cat who only has one owner, and that owner was unquestionably my grandmother.

Whaley’s illness made the family understand how close they were, even though everyone could see how much Trooper and Whaley loved each other.

Around Christmas [the previous year], ‘my grandmother started going further downhill, and we started seeing her [Trooper] being there all the time,’ Hackney added.

The most of the time, Trooper slept on Whaley’s bed, although she occasionally brought gifts from other parts of the house.

When my grandma couldn’t move around as much anymore, she would bring things to her — whatever she’d find on the floor, like socks or a straw — even though she wasn’t the kind to pick up toys and carry them around the house or anything.

‘She increased the amount of material she was carrying as she kept growing sicker and sicker and sicker. She would simply take his socks out of his room, carry them downstairs, and lay them on the floor.

She was clearly distressed about what was happening, and you could tell by looking into her eyes, according to Hackney. Whaley occasionally experienced panic episodes, and Trooper would run to her side to comfort her.

She would simply start touching her and petting Trooper, which would cause her to calm down. Trooper would run in there and hop on the bed.

‘I think that having Trooper there was extremely relaxing for my grandmother as she started coming to the stage where she couldn’t communicate anymore.’ Trooper didn’t seem to be worried from Whaley’s hospital bed by anything.

According to Hackney, my grandmother became quite confused whenever she was about to pass death. She would accidentally hit or squeeze Trooper too hard because she was always by her side, and Trooper would never fight back.

‘She would simply leap out of bed, wait for my grandmother to settle down, and then jump back in.’ That would have been the end of it if we had done that. She liked my grandma, and she never, ever bit her or scratched her, otherwise we would have been a bloody mess.

Hackney continued, ‘You could tell how much she loved my grandma by the way she would look at her when she was ill. “Seeing all of this suffering in her eyes simply shattered your heart.’

When Whaley passed away in March, a few days before her 97th birthday, Trooper was devastated.

‘I had taken her in there to show her that Grandma is not coming back, but she didn’t want to be around my grandma’s body. I wanted her to comprehend that our granny is no longer there because if they don’t know, they’ll look for them.

‘However, she escaped and hid beneath my parents’ bed. She stopped eating after they took my grandma’s body. She doesn’t speak much, but the cat was constantly crying as she walked around the house.

Hackney claims that Trooper is doing much better now, although she continues to enter Whaley’s room and drop things like socks on the floor. She clearly misses Grandma, according to what Hackney stated.

Hackney recently made a post about her grandmother’s devotion for Trooper in a private Facebook group called Cool Cats Group, and the post quickly gained popularity.