In the fall of 1995, When my 5 year old daughter’s gorgeous, new little blue-eyed Himalayan kitten was stolen, I set out to find her another kitten to mend her broken heart.  My goal was to locate the most homely kitten in the universe and take it home so that no one would steal my baby’s new friend.  My search, in what seemed to be a kitten-less world at the time, led me to the backwoods of Elbe, Washington to a litter of truly, the ugliest kittens I’d ever seen. “Perfect”, I thought, and I scooped up the scrawniest grey female, deciding that it looked more like a little bat than a kitten.  We named her “Lucy”.  I took great delight in saying (in my worst Cuban accent), “Luuucy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!”, (Ricky Ricardo style) anytime there was kitten shenanigans afoot.

My daughter, an only child, found a sibling is Lucy who delighted in the company of a girl who loved her more than anything. She grew up to be a gorgeous little cat with the sweetest disposition and a tummy the color of pumpkin.  My daughter and Lucy grew up together and they were inseparable.  As a child, Rhiannon rolled the cat around in a little toy shopping cart, Lucy dressed in doll clothes, snuggled into a pile of doll blankets, purring away like it was the best possible thing she could be doing. Lucy was there for her through it all; grade school middle school and the first year of high school. When “her girl” went off to finish high school in California, she cried for her, truly mourning her absence and looking for her everywhere. When our traveling student came home for a visit, she was always blissfully purring; the girl’s long absence forgiven.  It was always Rhiannon she wanted.  It was always Rhiannon she liked best. The rest of us, she tolerated. Even with her health declining in the last few months, she never missed an opportunity to hiss at the other animals in the house.

Lucy promised me that she wouldn’t leave us until Rhiannon graduated from college. She did exactly that.  Rest now, my tiny, sweet Lil’ Lucy. You were the best little cat in the world for the very best little girl in the world.

~ Mama