As mentioned in my last post, we lost our 18 year old cat Lucy on the 15th April. Friend artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins wrote a wonderfully vivid account of her in his Facebook post today, so I’m copying and pasting that to my blog here. I’ve dug out some photos of her at just 2-3 weeks old being fed from her baby bottle, (with a disgruntled 14 year old Gem whose blatant disapproval is evident)
Here she is, just a wee slip of a thing and nestling in Graham’s hands.
Later as an adult she found the oddest places to sleep, like this garden pot
Clive’s remembrance of our Lucy, he describes her character to a tee:
On the Passing of a Princess
Letter to my friend Lizzie in France, on hearing of the death of her cat, Lucy.
Christmas 2018 at La Crabouille, sitting at the kitchen table making preparatory sketches for a project that had come in via an e-mail and that required I start straight away to meet the deadline. Lucy is outside, peering intently at me through the window pane. She yowls and pats at the window to test whether it’s open. It isn’t. She stares harder at me. More yowls, louder, and in a rising pitch. I get up and cross to the window to unlatch it. In she comes. She sits companionably on a chair next to me. I go the tap to get myself a glass of water, and when I turn back she’s curled up RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY DRAWING, a scattering of garden ‘bits’ around her. She gives me a stony look, daring me to move her. I pick her up firmly and put her to the floor. Pause. She stalks with stiff-legged hauteur to the kitchen door to be let out, and I oblige her. Back to work at the table. Not two minutes later she’s at the window, again, patting at it. I ignore her. She rears to her hind legs to emphasise the urgency, patting harder, her claws making little scratching noises, stopping from time to time to pierce me with a stare emphasising her meaning. I get up, cross to the window and let her in. This happens repeatedly throughout the morning. I must have let her in twenty times by the time G passes through the kitchen and says “Just ignore her.” I try to. I really try. But Lucy just thinks up more attention-grabbing strategies. Now she’s putting her shoulder to the panes, and her yowling has passed from urgent to Banshee-shrieks of rage. You come in, Lizzie, and go to the window to let her in, saying as she streaks past “Oh poor Lucy, wouldn’t Clive let you in?”!!! Lucy leaps to table, to stand defiantly in front of me, her nose inches from my face. Very slowly and without unlocking her gaze from mine, she sits on my drawing hand – the pencil still between my fingers – in the middle of my sketchpad!
Clive included a couple of lovely photos, see below:
R.I.P. Lucy.
2002 – 2020
lizkingsangster 
Sorry to hear this sad news Liz. Lovely photos, and Lucy was clearly quite a character!
Thanks Phil, it probably seems a bit trivial to some people during these disquieting times when so many are dying, but then …love is love, be it for humans or for animals.
I hope you’re bearing up, we can’t wait for next week ..only 6 days to go and Graham can go cycling, we can meet up with friends again, albeit with masks, and hopefully no more queueing, although that I doubt and we’ll still have to wash the shopping but hey…..yippee!!
The bond between us and our pets is something very special and unique I think Liz, difficult to describe. My dog was also called Lucy and I remember how affected I was when she came to the end of her life.
Enjoy the lifting of restrictions next week, I think we’ll all really appreciate them after the last couple of months!
🐈🐕😷🙂!
It takes a community to know a cat. The crows and the magpies knew our Vandal was safe and loved other animals from her post at the window of our Brooklyn apartment, making friends with seagulls. She was a rescue from the lower East Side in New York City. The stories they could tell. Love to you and Graham, Nancy
>
I love to imagine Vandal in NY at her window watching the city birds, but I know how she loved France once she got used to the outside. There’s comfort in seeing a cat relaxed and asleep under the shade of the wisteria, Lucy’s special place, ( although the cat sat on the mat sometimes and would trip us up because she had melted into the colour)
So Vandal and Lucy decided to leave us this year, and they left us both with sore hearts. XxL
Merci Liz pour le partage de tes souvenirs
Les photos de Lucy et de Vandal
Salut chère Nicole, comment vas-tu? Ça fait longtemps…….biz Liz