o little lucy

First of all, I want to thank everyone who expressed concern over my lovely cat, Mollie, and to myself. I was extremely touched and that warmth has really carried me.

My Mollie is still gone.

I am coming to terms with it. I still have hope she will return... but... I have cleaned up her dish bowls and put her toys away. For awhile, I left her little wispy cat hairs on a pillow she loved to sleep on ... but I've now since vacuumed them up.

Animals have such a way of filling up a heart, don't they? And they leave such a void when they are gone.



I am reminded of another cat I had who walked into my life and heart two years ago.

I was putting my townhouse up for sale when the most tiniest, skinniest cat with the sharpest little fangs and the biggest head in the world, arrived on my front step and started sharpening her claws on my screen door.

"NooOo, nooo, Kitty, don't do that!"

She had the fiercest meow.

She made a low but loud guttural sound that came deep from her gut. She demanded to come in. She appeared starving so I fed her some dry kibble I had and she ate the whole bowl up. She stared up at me and her meows sounded like she was yelling at me. I was afraid to touch her. She looked diseased and worried that maybe letting her in my home wasn't the brightest idea, but I knew she needed love and caring and I felt she wasn't getting it anywhere.

This little tiny cat, I eventually called Lucy, continually clawed at my screen door to get in during all hours of the night and poked teeny holes into it. At the height of my frustration, I grabbed little Lucy and carried her off to the farthest corner of the complex I was living in. I shouted, "Staaay!!" and I ran as fast as my legs would carry me back to my home.

It was just like those old chase scenes on TV, where the woman is running and stops to look back and sees the man walking toward her and starts running again and then trips on a root, and stands up and looks back and the man is still walking and they're about the same distance apart, no matter how much running she does, he is able to keep up.

It happened just like that. I'd be running through parking lots and along curving sidewalks and then stop to turn around and I could see her walking toward me and hear her loud meowing probably saying, "I'll get you, My Pretty!" as she followed me back.

I quickly grabbed a flattened box I had for packing, and taped it to my screen door with packing tape so she couldn't scratch it. When I reached down to grab the last strip of tape, my fingers touched something soft. It was little Lucy! She was right there like a bad nightmare screaming at me with those little sharp fangs.

"Get awaaay!" I quickly rushed inside, shutting the door.

For a good hour, I could hear her scratching the cardboard demanding to get inside. Like Chucky! (I've never seen a Chucky movie, but that's how I imagine them to be). Sometimes her meows sounded like, "wullawullawullawullawallaa woooooo!" I felt I was stuck inside a horror movie.

After some silence, I began to relax a bit, when I started to hear cat claws scratching my screen door again. The cardboard was flat against the screen so I thought it was my imagination. I s-l-o-0-O-w-l-y tiptoed to my front door and opened it up. I didn't see her and as I closed the door, there was a LOUD meo0OwW and I looked at my screen door and she had squeezed herself between the cardboard and the screen door! She looked like a cardboard cutout of a cat hanging on to the screen. "Meeo0OowW"

I can't express to you how terrifying she was. At one point, I thought maybe she was a mechanical cat and I was a part of a "Smile, You're on Candid Camera" episode.

It was clear she was homeless and she slept out on my front porch day in and day out.

She clawed her way my heart and when my townhouse sold within six days and a month later, I packed up and moved away, I reluctantly packed her up, too.

I took her to the vet to be checked out and this tiny little kitten, was actually approximately 19 years old with an active thyroid! I fed her as much as she wanted because I knew she wasn't long for this world. She would eat three cans a day at least and a bowlfull of kibble. Her fur started to feel silky and soft. Her meows weren't so angry. She seemed almost joyful at this new home of hers.

Six weeks later, I could tell she was dying. She wasn't eating and her eyes were dialated. I sat beside her for an hour and a half and hoped she wasn't in any pain. I talked to her for a long time in the softest, soothing voice I could come up with. The last time I saw her alive, was seeing her tail when she climbed under the fence.

We buried little Lucy on my mom's property in the pet cemetery with all our childhood pets. I cried for three days.