How I learned to love Lucy, the cat with the baboon butt

A few weeks after we adopted her, our cat Lucy got locked outside and began screaming at the top of her lungs.

That was cool.

Cool because her panic melted my heart, and for the first time I thought I could love this creature I hadn’t wanted in our home since the day she arrived.

Lucy quickly learned to love the outdoors.

She used to belong to my husband’s friend, but he moved to a new place where he said he couldn’t bring her. To prevent her from going to a shelter, my husband agreed to take the cat.

I didn’t want another cat, and all I saw when he brought Lucy home was how inferior she was to our kitty Stella, whom I could not have been more in love with.

Stella was a sleek silver tabby who spent most of her time exploring outside. Lucy was a chunky indoor cat with dull black fur flecked with dandruff and a skinny tail that looked like a rat’s.

And it just got worse when she started losing that fur in big patches mostly around her rump until she looked like a bare-assed baboon.

It also didn’t help that she was clumsy and always getting her claws stuck on things. One time I emerged from the shower to frantic wailing from the bedroom and found her hanging upside down with all four paws wrapped up in the blinds. I tried to untie her but she bit and scratched me, so I finally had to cut up the blinds to free her.

Then we started finding piles of vomit everywhere. She’d yell to be fed, then promptly yak up everything she ate on anything that happened to be nearby. Before we found one pile she was yelling to be fed again so she could make the next one.

But the final straw was the anal squirts.

Few things are more pleasant than a warm, soft cat purring away, so I decided I could forget Lucy’s faults by inviting her onto my lap. It worked at first, with her gratefully purring and soon enthusiastically kneading away at my stomach.

But then I felt some drips on my bare leg and found a brown substance smelling like rotten fish which I realized dripped out of her behind – yes, poor Lucy has a tendency to expel from her anal glands when she gets excited.

I felt then there was no hope for us. A lifelong cat person, I had easily found things to love about every one I knew. Until Lucy.

And then she got locked outside. 

A strictly indoor cat before, Lucy seemed afraid of the outdoors so I never thought she would follow me when I took out the garbage one day and get herself trapped outside when I closed the garage door.

But soon I heard this strange yowling and looked out the window to see her in the driveway, totally consumed with panic and wailing like a car alarm that was getting louder and louder.

It reminded me of my grandmother’s stories about how terrified I was of getting lost as a kid, especially the time we were in a store and she merely stepped around the counter. Since I was too short to see over the counter, I thought I had been abandoned and began screaming in panic, humiliating her.

So I knew how Lucy felt, suddenly cut off from everything she knew and with no idea how to get back inside to the voices and smells that had barely become familiar. All my other feelings disappeared and I felt nothing but empathy and compassion for her.

Because everybody deserves a place where they feel safe. Even a cat with a baboon butt who squirts from her anal glands when she’s not throwing up.

So I brought her inside with a hug and talked to her sweetly for the first time. I started calling her Lucy Liu, her hair grew back when we got rid of the fleas and I eventually found a thing or two to love about her.

I especially love that not once in the six years since she got stuck in the blinds has she bitten or scratched me even a little bit, no matter how many times a day I pick her up without warning, squeeze her until she squeaks, then drape her over my shoulder for a quick dance around the house.

I guess she’s decided that’s a fair price to pay for feeling safe, and even loved.