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