One day I heard this frantic meow near the neighbors house, they have cats also and it kept up. I don’t know if they fed this meowing cat or not and I was trying to ignore this cat. I believe she tried all of us. She finally made her way over to our porch one morning. She was so loud and so persistent that she could not be ignored. I was feeding our cats in the morning and of course took her out a bowl of food. Before this I had only heard her. When I saw her and saw how little she was and her beautiful marks, that was about it. Then when I realized she had been pregnant and must have just had her kittens my heart melted. She was in great need. There were no kittens around so they were born dead or something happened to them because she was very young. I took her to the vet because I was afraid there were still some kittens in her, but an ultrasound revealed that there were none.
I tried to find her a home and also got her well and eventually had her spayed. She is a cat that if she were a human she would wear a suit, high heels and carry a brief case. She knows what she wants and is persistent about it. If she wants outside she will follow and stare until she gets what she wants. She is a hunter and will always share her “catch” with us. Last summer I counted 15 little critters that she gave to us. She loves to sit on the outside swing with me, walk around the house with me, take a walk on the sidewalk also. People are amazed that she will walk behind me on the sidewalk, doesn’t run across yards and turns the corners on the sidewalks. One day we were walking on a warm day and I saw that she was panting and slowing down, but not giving up. I picked up up and took her back home to cool off. She is a very smart girl and we are glad she is in our family.
It is now December 2024 and I am opening this page to sadly update. It made my heart warm to see these young pictures of my girl Lily. These are on top of the fireplace when she somehow jumped from somewhere to survey everything. She is such a pretty girl and I think she was really only one year old. So I now continue with her story. I love my cats so much and each has their own personalities, and she had one that brought us joy.
Another day we were walking and I noticed a hawk flying in the sky, then he was circling over our head and then slowly coming down and I realized that he had an eye on Lily. Well Lil (that’s what I called her now) we have got to go back home because I didn’t want to have to have a fight with a hawk. That was an end to our walks.
In the summer when we would be in the pool she would find us, walk around the whole edge of the pool, sometimes we thought she was going to jump in but it never happened before she had to stay inside and watch from the screen door.
If we would leave our socks on the floor from getting ready for bed, she would find them and let us know by dropping them in the middle of the floor. I would get up and get dressed and only find one sock. I would then have to seek out my sock that wandered into the night. She would also climb onto the clean pile of socks and find one to drag out. She would have a special “sock meow” and we would watch her come out in the daytime and say something to her. She would stop, drop and stare.
When the kids still lived at home she would drag their dirty socks up the stairs and leave them in the middle of the floor. Think how many of those we had.
She loved when we took our showers and it would be unusual to not look around the corner to see one green eye peeking around at you. She would look forward to drinking the water that pooled on the ledge or would walk into the shower to investigate after we had gotten out. For the first couple of weeks after she was gone I still would expect to see her peeking.
I created a picture with her in it. This is what it looked like when she was peeking.
She had a way about her. When Lily would walk on the wood floor I would always know who it was. Her footsteps were always precise with small paws. It was decided that Tigerlily wasn’t the right name for her. It was shortened to Lily and then Tom liked Lillian Bouvia Prescott and I called her Lil and Tom just Bouvia. She would find us no matter what and just stop and stare, like yes…what do you need?
Lily was one of the greeters when we had visitors. She would always stay out and about and not be scared. We had the carpet cleaner here one day here one day and he looked at her and exclaimed “You have a bullseye tabby! We had one and that was just the smartest cat!” We had not paid attention to her fur design but my goodness, it was a bullseye on each side. Now I look at other tabbys to see if I can see another.
So her last couple of weeks or longer, she wasn’t herself. Not interested in eating, she was losing weight. No sock meows and a lot of sleeping. I took her to the doctor. Her blood test was perfect, heart sounded good, maybe some heavy breathing. She got a couple of shots for an upset stomach and arthritis. She should start doing better. She didn’t and I took her back at the end of the week. I had noticed that she was heaving like she couldn’t catch a breath and sounded like there was some liquid. The x-ray discovered that one side of her lung was filled with possible cancer and was moving to the other side. I wasn’t ready to let her go and had to take her home and have the evening and night with her. They gave her a steroid and lasix to get her through the night. The vet said that it wouldn’t last but would help through the night. She was going to the bathroom and eating and she was the usual gal. She got up after we went to bed and came in and slept in the crook of Tom’s legs like usual. On Saturday November 16th we went in with her and loved her and it all was very calm and sad.
Yes, she was so smart and we miss her greatly. We were not ready to let go! Our lives became much richer when I started feeding that little girl.
Lily made it into many paintings. I told her to find Stonewall (he is the yellow cat) because he was very smitten with her when she came to live with us. The other two large cats are Smoke and Sebastian. We lost all three in the same year. That was very tough.