Dear Lily,
We met you for the first time in an apartment complex behind the 7-11 on Harmony Road. We were summoned there by Craigslist, and Mindy’s driving desire for a kitten. It was dark, and the scent of cooking dinners and stale secondhand smoke took me back to the eastside complexes where I showed up with Tony Roma’s ribs.
We found the apartment door and knocked. A kind man in a muumuu answered, and he ushered us in and sat us on the floor. Then he opened his bedroom door and out into the light of the living room tumbled a parade of eight week-old ragdolls and one of them was you.
Your mom was the ragdoll, a breed prized for long fur, affable personalities, and a knack for relaxing when lifted. Mindy had ragdolls before, and that’s why she tracked you guys down. Your dad was a different breed—Himalayan maybe?—which made you kittens affordable. For ragdolls anyway.
“And probably healthier,” said Mindy on the drive over.
You guys wandered around us, almost overwhelming us with charm. I wasn’t sure where to begin, but Mindy was a veteran cat selecter and offered advice before we arrived: Let our kitten choose us.
The parade dispersed. Some of your siblings mewled near the edges or trotted by in search of other curiosities, but three approached us: a brave dark male who greeted us first, and then two sisters, gray and white and fuzzy. You were all sweet, but the females matched the markings reminded Mindy of Alleycat, the ragdoll she lost. Of the two, we settled on the one who fit us most, and that was you.
We named you on the drive home.
The first time Mindy called me on the phone, she was at her family home in the hills above Temecula, and Alleycat was missing somewhere on the Santa Rosa Plateau. She’d returned home from a visit to Portland and needed someone with her in the fear of losing a beloved creature, and she thought to call me. She shouted Alleycat’s name over and over into the chaparral.
After that, Mindy still had Noël. And she had me to talk with through the sadness and stages of grief. But Alleycat was gone, and Mindy hurt. That was one grief you helped to heal.
At home, we introduced you to Noël, the cross-eyed cat. You guys sniffed each other with mild curiosity. Then we introduced you to Athena. We sent our pitbull to her crate, and set you in front. You didn’t see her at first, and when you did you hissed and Athena skittered to the back corner of her crate and licked her lips anxiously and after that she never really hassled you again outside of policing when you jumped up on counters. That was the first dog you met and you never showed a hint of fear toward any canine species through the rest of your life.
That night, you slept on a pillow by my head.
You were the baby and you were beloved. You’d nap next to Athena and antagonize Noël with kitten energy though she was stronger and more ornery. You also groomed each other. It was difficult not to compare and contrast. Where Noël was vocal and underfoot, you were stoic and sweet. Where Noel would gripe, we’d pick you up and cradle you and you wouldn’t flinch. You earned nicknames: Lils, Lilbils, Lilsbils, Li’l Latin Lily Lils.
You moved with us to Phoenix, and I think you liked the heat. You became a prolific hunter of geckos, and were rarely fooled by their shed-tail trickery. Lana arrived while we were there and you took to her like a watchful elder guardian, hanging out in her room, or watching the world outside the screen door together.
Then there was Mindy’s cancer. The treatments, and the fear. All three of you comforted us as we faced the uncertainty of those years. You—our precious creatures—were relegated in priority, but you saw and felt it all.
After months of chemo and surgery, the cancer looked gone and we returned to Oregon. You all had room to roam at our house in Garden Home, to explore the backyard along Fanno Creek. We had a peaceful convalescence that year, a gift since Mindy’s time was brief. 18 months later, the cancer returned and she died a few months after that.
One day, much later, in the midst of mourning on the floor, you were near me, purring, and I picked up my phone to run a Google search: what are cats good for?
And I found an answer I already knew: cats know how to care for the anguished.
Without Mindy, there were four creatures to care for, and I barely had the bandwidth to care for myself.
We moved, and circumstances required Athena be sent to live with Mindy’s parents. Down to three, and one of them, Noël, was needy and had her own pain at Mindy’s loss. Every time I sat, she was on my lap, pressing biscuits into my arm. Another way she mourned was by peeing on any and all clothing we left on the floor. You were an angel by comparison, though let us not forget your shredding of our ottoman.
We’d let you guys roam outside with us, and sometimes that meant one of you was left outside, or in the garage overnight. Mostly, you were hungry and irritable in the morning, but sometimes a lockout would lead to a one or two-night walkabout, and I’d fear you were nabbed by coyotes or raccoons. Then you’d be there again in the morning, meowing to be let in. Were some of the longer walkabouts meant to be a message? What adventures did you go through alone?
The cat we should’ve worried about was Noël. One night, she was accidentally left out, and we never saw her again. Coyotes or raccoons were likely. She was a sweet-natured homebody, not the sort to wander, and she was loud and declawed. Her loss left a stain of guilt.
Athena was the next to leave. After over a decade as a very good dog, she was put down far away from us in Southern California.
This is the bitterness we trade for the joy of life with our pets. Outside a tortoise or parrot, we often live longer, and that means bearing your deaths.
So the way lives end matters, and the loss of Athena and Noël reverberated into a vague dread over how your last days would go. You, a remnant of Mindy, Lana’s treasured friend. You were our little Lils.
Your occasional walkabouts dipped me into wells of sadness, and yet you always returned—sometimes with the gift of a mouse—and we’d feel relief, and you’d meow indignantly but forgive us quickly after a snack and a sip of water.
All along, there was your sisterhood with Lana. Her passion for cats is due in part to you, and she tended you gently, trimming nails and matted hair, watching your health, riding along on every vet visit.
At your last visit, the vet told us your time was short and I was angry because he’d said this before, that your kidneys were failing, that your heart had a murmur. But you kept going for years. You lost weight, had a cataract which threw off your hunting, but you were good to go.
Yet it was true, you’d lost weight. The vet asked if I’d seen a cancer patient toward the end. Yes, I said.
That’s around what her weight is now, comparably,” said the vet. You just don’t want to make the call too late.
When is it too late? I asked the vet.
He told me it was time when you no longer enjoyed anything, when you’d give us looks as if to say, I’m done here.
It gets rough if you wait too long, the vet warned.
I didn’t want that. I didn’t want you to suffer, so I watched.
The diagnosis built our appreciation for you for a moment, but the end didn’t look imminent. You still jumped on the counter for faucet water; still perched next to us and purred; still wolfed down Perfect Portions; still basked in sunbeams.
We thought through the years about adding another kitten, maybe a companion to learn from you. But you were 17 years old. Geriatric. I couldn’t allow the disruption to you. You cared for us after Mindy died. You helped raise Lana. You more than earned our undivided care.
Hearing your time was short shocked Lana, whose love for you grew all all those years. She took thousands of photos of you, carried you out to swing in the backyard, and you’d roll in the grass near her. Your last day happened. The sun was golden and warm, and Lana took you out under the tree. She swung. She took your photo while you basked in the sun. You slow blinked at her, over and over, which we learned only recently is one way you cats show you love. Lana blinked back.
“Dad!”
Early in the morning I heard her wavering cry, the ones parents know is real. I dashed into Lana’s room, and you were laid out in the space next to Lana’s head, where you slept your first night with our family, where you liked to sleep all your life. You were breathing odd, raspy. You seemed uncomfortable.
“Is she dying?” Lana asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. You seemed okay, maybe the breathing slowed.
Not now, I thought. Not so early.
I had to think. I had to pee. We don’t decide the time.
Should we take her to the vet?
Did we wait too long?
Little prayers flitting.
I escaped toward the bathroom. I heard you yowl. I rushed back in.
We were there as you breathed your last, as you passed away, as your body rested. We hope those words hint at what happened. We hope you are still somewhere. In the silent weeks after you left, in the days when we were free to leave the front door wide open, there were also fallen items, doors swung open. Was that you? Or are you with Mindy? Do you wait, quiet, for the Kingdom to come?
Bearing you gone was not easy, our family its smallest since bachelorhood. You had your places, your manner. Whether or not your soul remains, you are a ghost.
And we are still uneasy at your loss, because the death of our animals reflects the death of our people. Yet your losses are quicker remedied, and you left not long before Lana’s birthday, and around that time Ashley found two brothers, ragdoll mixed with Maine coon, up in northwest Vancouver. So we drove up that way and Lana held one and I held the other and it wasn’t quite a kitten parade, but they live here now. We call them Castor and Pollux, but you know how names change.
Still, these new kittens are no you. Who could ever replace Li’l Latin Lil Bils in sour hearts? Thank you for being here. Thank you for being our cat. You brought great joy to our life! You showed your nobility, your warmth, your tender care for us.
“She’s one of the friendliest cats I’ve ever met,” visitors would say.
You were friendly. You were our friend and family. You were a wonderful creature to carry home, to spend so many days with, to care for, to love. Thank you, Lily.
And thank you, God, for giving her to us for seventeen years, for letting us be there at the end. Lily is yours now. Please take care of her. Amen.
Fanno Creek! I live not too far from Fanno Creek.
We lost our 18 year old kitty, Oli, four years ago this month. She was a trooper and we still miss her.
Sending all good thoughts and love to you and Lana, Jordan.