Lucy

Lucy died Thursday night. For the week leading up to her death, I watched her quickly decline. First it was her inability to jump on to the top of Wendell’s cage, her favorite sleeping spot. Her walking already made difficult by her weakened right back leg worsened by the failing of her left back leg. As she maneuvered across the laminate floor, her back end would swing back and forth in her attempt to stand upright. Walking outside was much easier with the textured concrete and grass.

The angels were watching over her as we experienced a warm spell of beautiful August weather so that Lucy spent many hours a day sleeping in her spot behind the house and wandering around the backyard. I planned my days accordingly and managed to finish all my weeding, raking and mowing while Lucy supervised.

By Tuesday morning, Lucy had refused all food preferring to drink a little milk and copious amounts of water. As each day passed, her fragile body continued to shrink. I could now feel all her bones through the matted fur that I tried to brush to her objection. Thursday morning, she refused to walk with me down the driveway to pick up the newspaper. I knew then, that Lucy’s life would be measured in hours not days. She sat in the front yard while I collected acorns that had fallen to the ground. By late afternoon Lucy had returned to her bed in the family room where she remained until she died.

I’ve taken Lucy’s death far harder than I had expected. Yes, she had lived a long life – 20 years plus a month. But with Lucy, unlike Gracie, I had a string of precious memories attached to her life. She was my first female cat brought into my home to relieve poor old Tristan of the constant torments of the kitten Max. If my intention was to introduce a new playmate for the rambunctious Max, Lucy had other thoughts. She took one look at the two males, pronounced them unfit companions and unceremoniously hissed and spit at them. Thus began a twenty year campaign of hating the other cats in the house. It wasn’t until Lucy lost all her hearing that the other cats could even come close to her. They would wait until Lucy fell asleep then crawled up next to her to cuddle.

At one point in my life, Lucy became my roommate and constant companion. We lived in a small apartment together where she enjoyed being an only child. Lucy became playful, something not seen with other cats around. She took to stealing my watch, dropping it besides her water dish every morning. One night Lucy decided to knock a terra cotta potted plant off my headboard and on to my head. I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention to her. But my favorite memory was how she took to riding in the car, sitting in the backseat looking out the window as we drove down the road.

While Lucy didn’t like the other cats much, she took to most people. She particularly loved my niece, Katie who during her frequent visits built her kitty condos and carried Lucy around the house like a doll. But Lucy had no love for the vet. Every visit was an adventure. Lucy would throw a fit: growling, curling up in a ball, sinking her tiny sharp claws into my back. She may have been the smallest of my cats, but her fury had no match.

In her later years, she developed a truce with the intrepid Gracie. With her hearing gradually declining, Gracie stepped in to watch over Lucy when they were outside together. They would sit outside together watching the squirrels and birds and sharing meals together. I didn’t realize how tightly the two had bonded until Gracie’s death this June. Lucy had had health issues at the same time as Gracie but her spirits were upbeat as was her activity level. But when Gracie died, all that changed. It seemed that once Lucy lost her friend, she had little will to live. So when she died, we buried Lucy next to her friend Gracie. It seemed appropriate for the Two Old Broads, as I called them, to spend eternity next to one another.  

It’s been three days since she died, but I still find myself expecting to see Lucy sitting by the back door waiting for me to take her outside for her morning walk to feed the squirrels and pick up the newspaper. Mama Kitty has taken over Lucy’s sleeping spot on Wendell’s cage and Eddie, who always hovered around Lucy to steal her bowl of canned cat food; now sits on my morning newspaper whimpering and begging for attention. Maybe I misread Lucy’s place in the cat hierarchy.  Lucy was the matriarch, the stern but always present adult in a household of incorrigible children. The order has been shaken up and it will take time for all of us to find our new roles in the house.

Lucy with Gracie dining outside - 2012

Making the tough decision.

Lucy in 2007

I knew this day was coming, but when it arrived I wasn’t emotionally ready for it. Since the first of the year, Lucy has had stomach problems. Day after day, one month merging into three, then into eight months, I cleaned up dribbles of diarrhea off the floor as Lucy moved through the house. The furniture was now covered with towels and sheets to protect the upholstery and the number of loads of laundry done each week doubled. In moments when I just had had enough of wiping poop off the floor, I’d asked myself why I would tolerate such a situation and why damn it, didn’t the vet seem more concerned about what was happening.

Finally in July, I confronted my vet about the situation. Nothing was working: the anti-diarrheal medication, the special diet, and the pro-biotic. I was frustrated, angry and yet upset that my Lucy, who had had a long (20 years), healthy life was now forced into weekly baths and daily battles to clean her backside of clinging feces. Then, I heard what I had feared all along. Based on her symptoms and the fact that none of the usual remedies were working, Lucy likely had a mass in or surrounding her intestines. Cancer, it seemed was going to do this old girl in. Too old for surgery, there was little I could do but make her comfortable until the end. Eventually the mass would cut off the intestinal passageway and Lucy’s life would be over.

In some ways, now knowing the truth, made the floor cleaning, the bottom wiping more tolerable. Weeks went by where I now just accepted that this was her reality and there was really nothing I could do. All that changed last week. After eight months, the dribbles stopped as fast as they started. Being the optimist, I thought perhaps I had made Lucy’s situation worse by all the fussing over her. By backing off and leaving her be, perhaps her anxiety has lessen and her body was following suit.

Well, I was wrong. Lucy began to strain, hunching her back spastically. Soon the back right leg began to splay out. Then the back left leg began to weakened turning the laminate floor into an ice rink. She begged to go outside where the rougher concrete patio gave her legs traction and she could sleep in her favorite spot behind the house.

I hold mental debates each night. Am I being cruel to allow her to live like this? Lucy doesn’t fuss, shows no pain, wants to be active and maintains her daily routine. Am I projecting my own interpretation of a good life onto Lucy when she was content, thank you very much?

I cannot make that telephone call to the vet as long as Lucy continues to follow me outside to feed the birds, pick up the newspaper and help me work in the yard. She isn’t much interested in eating now reducing the potential of digested food backing up into her system and buying her time. But who am I fooling? I realize that I am only kidding myself that she will miraculously return to her old self and see her next birthday. One morning, maybe tomorrow, maybe by week’s end, I will find her curled up in pain with eyes pleading me to do something. 

Monday morning in August

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” -  Hans Hofmann

August rolled in without much thought. Deep in the excitement and activity of the local film festival, I wasn’t paying much attention to much of anything other than my movie schedule and those tasks that could not be ignored. With the last film behind me, I began my Monday as I typically do, communicating with my clients to determine what work I had to complete this week.

I ran my morning errands, picking up food for my home as well as for the wildlife that lived in my yard. Toting the bags of corn and sunflower seeds through the patio to their bins, I noticed the berries formed on my holly bushes, some of whom had already turned red. In the noise that was my week, I realized that once again I had lost my way. Caught up in trying to grow my business, caring for my ailing cats and fitting in all that I could in the short months that are summer, I had ignored the voice inside me.

I put away the food and went back outside. The neighborhood was quiet from human activity and that void was filled with the soft breeze song of swaying tree branches accompanied by a chorus of crows. I stopped and looked up at Gaia, the large red oak that stands at the head of my drive. She is a beautiful tree with a large canopy. As is my practice each morning as I pass her to pick up the newspaper, I give her a kiss on a special spot on her trunk and wish her a good morning. But today, I felt I needed to do more. I wrapped my arms around her, feeling the texture and coolness of her trunk against my skin.

As I backed away from the tree, that sense of peace that I get when I’m out in the woods flooded through me. How did I let myself get so off-track? Consumed by unnecessary worries and thoughts and hours of frivolous activity, I behave as if my physical life is infinite. And to what end? I’m no better off financially than I was a year ago except that I refilled the emptied spaces in my world with new possessions. What was the purpose of all my reading, journaling and reflection about simplicity if I didn’t incorporate it into my daily life? True change is when you take your dreams and bring them to fruition.

Instead of running around in that frantic but always unsuccessful attempt to be everything to everyone, I will sit outside on the patio and enjoy this gorgeous summer day. That to-do list will be reviewed and those items that do not align with my dreams will be checked off as completed. The television set will remained turned off and my constant worries that I don’t have enough, will be set aside for the day. Today is for nurturing me.