Tiger Lily’s Twilight (Sunset, Thursday, 28 July 2011)

William Theodore Van Doren, TIGER LILY’S TWILIGHT (Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

This is the sky that was left to me by our cat Lily, who died peacefully today in our living room at the age of 19 years + 100 days. Although she had a name suited to her great beauty as a tiger-striped calico (formal name Tiger Lily), she was most often addressed as ‘Yump’, ‘Yumpie’, or ‘Yumpie Chumpie’. These names had more to do with her being sweet and cute. These and, every once in a while, ‘Silly Lily’.

I fished Lily, along with alpha littermate Stokey (still going strong), out of a light blue Ford Fairlane station wagon that was jacked up on cinderblocks in the back yard of a house in southwest Orange County, Virginia, in April 1992. The owner of the house was threatening to hunt down the mother with his .22 – welcome to Ruburbia!

This photo, taken when Lily was about four, shows her very much as she looked today.

Lily. Photo by Laura Owen Sutherland.