Lizzie

Lizzie has now been consigned to memory. I miss her terribly.

This morning Mom and I took her to Hyde Park Animal Clinic where Tom Wake--a good guy who manages to combine kindness and sensitivity with brisk efficiency--performed the euthanasia services.

Did she know this moment was coming? It sure seemed that way; getting her out of the house was really rough. The clever scenario I’d envisioned for tricking her into her carrier—placing it outside the front door the night before with the expectation of maneuvering her inside the thing this morning after she followed me into the hallway—quickly fell apart when she went into hiding instead. The diabetes meant she was always ravenously hungry and thirsty, yet this time she refused to budge at either the sound of kibble being poured into her silver dish or the sight of a little 2% milk in her orange saucer, as though she sensed something sinister was afoot. I wound up having to corner her under my mother’s desk and muscle her into her carrier, she snarling and spitting every step of the way.

Me feeling like a traitor.

At the clinic Dr. Wake‘s assistant carefully held her on a towel-covered examining table while Tom gently but surely injected her leg with a clear solution that made her unconscious then stopped her heart. At Tom’s urging I stroked her head and spoke softly to her, hoping my loving voice and touch were the last things she experienced as she faded. It was all over so quickly—she didn’t pant or struggle or moan—and I could swear I saw the light go out of her beautiful marble eyes. Her pink tongue protruded a little. Then she was gone.

One especially heartbreaking little moment: as Tom was administering the injection my mother tried to gently rub Lizzie’s extended paw and with her remaining strength Lizzie pulled away from her. I cringed inwardly at this; even seconds from death she would not allow Mom to befriend her. Mom didn’t comment or react, but it must have hurt. She’d tried so hard these last five years to win Lizzie over but Lizzie would have none of it. For a fleeting moment I was actually angry at the cat.

I am going to miss her so. I know I sound like one of those pathetic cat ladies everyone rolls their eyes about, but she was my baby and almost human in her irrepressible playfulness, compelling need for attention and affection, inquisitive nature, epic silliness, and occasions of hissing, paw-swatting cantankerousness. From the moment I first met her, a live-wiry 11 month-old calico in my neighbor's living room, she was truly a character, interrupting her wrestling match with a Kermit toy to bound over and leap into my lap, paws pressed against my chest, performing a whisker-tickling examination of my chin, lips, hands and knuckles, before deciding I was hers. I brought her home that very day (My neighbor had to move and couldn't take her with him) and watched her take over the place, as I knew she would.

I will miss her chirping, burbling greetings, her soft mewlings for her breakfast and supper, her sudden mischievous grabs at my passing feet, and the trick she developed (until finally she became too sick to balance herself safely) of sitting up on her haunches and begging like a dog, knowing I would melt at the sight and give her whatever she was after—usually a saucer of milk, her favorite treat.

Where she learned that gesture I will never know, but then, she was an amazingly smart animal. Whoever said cats can’t be trained has been seriously misinformed; I was always teaching Lizzie new things, often without my realizing I was doing it.

I will miss our hallway hockey games, whapping and sliding back and forth to each other aluminum foil balls, plastic milk jug rings and anything else that would roll or bounce or skip. I will miss hide and seek around the living room furniture, and her snooping shopping bag inspections of incoming groceries. I will miss her frantic little “hurry up!” meows whenever she’d hear my key in the door and her affectionate nuzzles and winds around my legs when I came in and knelt down to tickle her ears and properly say hello.

I have gotten through the rest of this day and this evening by pretending Lizzie is lazily snoozing somewhere in the house out of sight, a contented, fuzzy, tri-colored ball—it’s just too painful right now to admit that she's gone and I will never see her again. I will miss her every day, for a very long time. The house will feel this way for a very long while, strange and still and unnaturally quiet.