Three tails of the lovely Lily

I. The Clumping Cat Litter Incident: first written autumn 1998

We always had litter boxes in the basement. It is sunny and opens onto the yard. First Arthur and Dax, the cats we had when we bought the house, and then Rufus and Jacob, who came after those first children died at 15, loved the basement.

For Rufus and Jacob, it was a dog-free zone. Teddy never showed interest unless Jeff or I went down.  After Joseph learned to crawl, Teddy wouldn’t let him near the door from the kitchen to the stairs. All of Lily’s first winter with us, she had no interest in the basement, either.

Then spring came, and Lily realized the quickest way to the car was through the basement. She set up residence on an old couch and discovered the litter boxes. I realized she was eating cat poop when I saw litter on her nose. We placed a child gate at the top of the steps. However, she had the spine of a limbo dancer and it was impossible to keep the gate low enough to keep her out and high enough that a Persian at full speed could get under it without the occasional herding beardie bearing down on him. By summer, I had given up, taken away the gate, and started cleaning the boxes several times a day. Lily remained Princess Litter Nose.

One day Lily came upstairs with litter on her nose, and I cleaned it off. A bit later, while we were eating dinner, she suddenly looked distressed and began to heave and sway as if she were going to vomit. Instead, she gagged and I realized she was choking. I was standing up to try the Heimlich maneuver on her when she made one horrendous wheezing sound and was fine.

We bought a cat door, which Jeff’s father installed for us on his next visit. Joseph had never had interest in the basement, but the permanently closed door was an insurance policy for him, too.

Thus was I saved from the challenge of writing a tasteful obituary about a little girl who choked herself to death on clumping cat litter.

II. Lily at Twilight: First written autumn 2008

On New Year's Eve 1999 I took Lily for a walk at dusk around a reservoir near home. It was biting cold but with no wind, the sky darkened slowly, and you could identify homes on the shoreline by twinkling lights in windows. She was two years old and dragged me up the steepest parts of the path, which wound through four-story-tall pines. I wrote a poem when I got home, but somewhere in the years it has gotten lost. Not the memory, though. I will have that forever.

I will not have Lily forever. Even last winter, when at 10 years of age she tore a knee ligament running on ice in the backyard, the veterinary surgeon twisted her this way and that, said she wouldn't have guessed Lily was more than 6 or 7 years old based on her arthritis, and told us to repair the knee. Lily, who had the superb floating movement of her mother and father, started to flow across my yard again.

In January of this year she had a urinary tract infection, a first but not a big thing. Then it recurred. In September I realized she had begun to snort more, as if she were trying to clear her nose. She failed suddenly, developing nasal discharge that neither she nor I could keep clear and began vomiting up stomach content and mucus. After three days and roughly half the cost of my first new car, the prestigious animal hospital in Boston told us what is wrong: Lily has nasal cancer, and it has advanced, eating through the bone of her nose as it has grown. Underneath her coat, she has gone from a too slim 36 pounds in January to a gaunt 34 pounds.

Other than milking it to convince us she should sleep on the bed rather than in her crate, she seemed much better when she came home, reestablishing her dominance over her loving but clueless brothers with a growl here and a bite on the nose there for taking a bully stick she had discarded.

Yesterday her breathing deepened, and she was slow to get up. Last night, I hand fed her dinner (to keep food in her stomach I've gone to five small meals a day, which she gracefully accepts like the queen she is) and saw blood coming from her right nostril. After a friend came to stay with our son, we went into Boston with brothers in tow. No one, except perhaps Lily, thought she was coming home in a crate in the van.

She fooled us. Her breathing was, and is, very loud, but I understand why. No air passes through her nose anymore, just her mouth. The emergency vet marveled at the wagging tail and the tongue in the ear as she sat with Lily on the floor and examined her. I understand why Lily takes small bites and spaces them out. She cannot breathe and eat at the same time. I cannot understand how she can breathe and kiss at the same time, but she has always been a kissing flower.

The vet did not offer us the option of giving Lily her final peace. She said Lily was oxygenating well, fully functional, and had attitude. She suggested we take her home and consult her vet today. So, it is morning but we are in twilight. I will never forget the three hours we were at the hospital or that her half-brother Tucket lay down and put his head on the vet's lap after Lily kissed her and moved to the other side of the room lest the vet want to feel her up again. I will not forget Angus, who gets anxious in veterinary clinics, sitting like a statue next to Jeff, licking his neck.

Enjoy your days and your loved ones, for you never know when twilight will come.

III. Lily: First written winter 2009

A year ago today the Earth paused for a fraction of a second before picking up its rotation: Lily died. I woke up to blood around the bedroom, some of it so abundant it had mounded on the carpet. It had to be Lily. Her front feet were red, but she wagged her tail and wanted to go out to the backyard, where she put a plastic hot dog in her mouth and whacked her brother over the head with it. Then, she sat down and panted, and I knew we had run out of time.

The lobby of the animal medical center was full of volunteers selling holiday gifts at one table, with a woman making beautiful all-natural wreaths at another. I tried not to cry while I asked for an emergency evaluation and told them Lily had been diagnosed with cancer in September and her file should be available. We got the same young vet who had seen Lily in October.

The Lily I took to the hospital in December moved slowly, leaned against me, panted more openly. Yet she recognized the vet, who took one look at the congealed blood I had brought along in a whipped topping container left over from Thanksgiving and said, "Oh my."

We waited in an exam room before another vet came and said the hemorrhage was major and the only question was how long we would wait for the next. Lily was very calm, even when they put in the IV catheter. I sat on the floor beside her, the vet in front of her. I thought she would want to sit or lie down, but she stood and looked at the vet, even when I put gentle pressure on her back. Then, at the last moment, she turned her head quickly and kissed my face. The needle went into the catheter, and I had to quickly put my hands out so she didn't hit the floor when her legs buckled.

The time after that was odd and in slow motion. I stroked her and apologized she had mats, told her I loved her, apologized for pulling her slip collar over her head awkwardly, and realized I was talking to the ceiling as much as to her body. On my way out, the vet and two volunteers from the ornaments table hugged me, and the wreath lady gave me a bouquet of roses on behalf of Lily. One dried rose remains.

For the last month of her life I mourned that cancer had ruined her face. The tumor grew outward, through the bone, and mangled her muzzle. I tried to puff up the white hair so it wasn't obvious she looked like a Klingon, but she did rather than the mirror of her beautiful mother.

Now though, a year later, I can't remember the mangled face. I remember her luminous dark eyes and the fact that a girl who rarely did as told (her attitude was more ‘Leave a message and I'll get back to you’) stuck with me patiently at the hospital. I remember that her last act in life was to kiss me, and I am so grateful I had Lily, still have Lily, perfect and at peace in my heart.

Elizabeth Coolidge-Stolz © 2010