Lucy: 1998 - 5 February 2010

Lucy came to us after being rescued by our vet, Dr. W. Dr. W's husband had an office in their home, and one very frigid winter night he "felt" eyes watching him. He turned, looked at the window and saw a pair of beautiful blue eyes. He brought her inside, and Dr. W said she would take her to her office, spay her and put her up for adoption.

We were very vulnerable, having just sent our dear kitty, Mork the week before on Friday the 13th, 1998 to the Rainbow Bridge, and we had stopped in at the vet's office to settle our bill for his care. On a bench in the waiting room was a very small, very pretty kitty.

She needed a home, and our home needed a kitty.

We will never know what happened to make her so fearful of being held or confined in any way. We will never know what happened in the five months before she showed up at that window. She came to our home as a very timid kitty, and it took literally years for her to enjoy being petted. Only over the last year did she actually start rubbing up against us and purring aloud. It was a long wait but well worth it.

All of that is not to say she didn't care! She was a self-appointed sentry and knew where all of us were at any given time. If Pat and I were seated in a room, sooner or later she would march through the room, not actually looking at us, but you could tell she was just touching base. When we would leave the house for a while, she would settle into her guard post in the centre of the house.

Lucy had a great sense of humour. When Buddy came to live with us, she was not pleased. She would walk up to this very good-natured little kitty, lift her paw and "dribble" him. She hit him on the top of his head very quickly and softly, and you could almost see him sigh and wait until she was done. Most of the time she acted as if she ignored him, but sometimes a "kitty train" would roar through the house with Buddy being chased by Lucy; this earned her the nickname Lucy-Caboosie. She loved to sit by her crinkly play tunnel and wait for him to pass by so she could run through it and scare him to pieces. He wasn't all that scared because they would do this over and over again.

I had read of cats "gifting" people, most often with a mouse or bird they had presented, expecting to be praised. Lucy thought up a scheme of gifting all her own. Her most favourite possession was a very small, very worn blue sparkly ball. Every night when I would be working on the computer, sooner or later I would hear a loud meow outside the door. I would get up, and she would stand there with the ball in her mouth which she then spit out on the carpet. I'd have to tell her what a good girl she was, and maybe give her a few treats. If we went out to supper, when we would come home we might not see a kitty right away, but that blue ball would be prominently displayed in the entry doorway. Every time.

We have a screened-in porch with the screening going right to the floor. Her greatest love was to run from one end of that porch to the other, "chasing" a chipmunk who was running just the other side of the screen. How they knew she wouldn't actually hurt them I'll never know, but I actually saw one sitting right in front of her, washing its face. She was just beside herself! Now I look out on the porch and I see a little Lucy-circle of white fur where she would sit for hours underneath a chair and watch her chipmunks.

We had to make the agonizing decision to send our beautiful girl to the Rainbow Bridge on Friday, February 5, 2010. We are "seeing" her everywhere -- in her favourite napping places, her special place in the dining room where she decided she should be given treats. Just the last month or so she seemed to be trying to get closer to us. She was making the mighty leap up onto the bed to be petted. She would pop open the bathroom door as I was getting ready in the morning, and I'd stop and sit on the floor and have some Lucy time. She would come into rooms where we were more and more. Was this the breakthrough we had waited for years to see, or was it her way of saying goodbye?

We were with our Lucy at the end. I cradled her shoulders and head, Pat and I stroked her, and the last thing she saw was that her blue sparkly ball was right with her. She was a tough cookie with the softest heart in the world and we were so lucky to share her life.

Picture by Arlene Sphikas

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