Rain in February is cold dreary sad and unwelcoming like a punishment.

Lily and I go out and up and our feet push slush around where it clings in a frigid layer to mud below. My feet sink and I watch Lily as she prances across the yard leaving footprints like polka dots. Back inside I sit and look at all my familiar pens checkbook cell phone newspaper dictionary and can’t shake the gloom. Something decaying scurried through my system like a cat and rubbed against everything. The more it rubs and purrs the less my things are mine.

Who put all this junk here anyway?

Is Lily any bigger do you think? Well, she won’t gain weight that you can see overnight, Jerry said. It will take time. Am I patient? Is patience something you realize you had once an ordeal ends? Or can you begin with promises to never tap your foot or become loud and demanding from the back of the line? Lily, what is WRONG with you? Do I have to be patient everyday, or can I blow my horn and rant until the windshield is fogged?

Dogs litter the house like spilled laundry. Hershey is drooped over the side of our bed with her head dangling toward the floor. Ozzy blends in with blankets and snorts while below him Bandit has wedged his bulk against the coffee table. Lily seems to have fallen from some height and landed splat on the floor. Legs like collapsible poles are attached to her ribs neck head hips. She looks vacuum sealed so I feed her.

Lately she eats more deliberately like it’s a factory job stamping something that rolls by on a conveyor belt. What does that mean?

Standing in the kitchen and leaning against the rough wooden trim I read instruction to give her Panacur and ask Jerry, when is the 27^th? I count on my fingers and decide that in less than a week I give Lily the second half of this treatment. Then what?

I am forgetting things I am like tea sloshing over the rim I forgot to bring home the laptop from work. Crap.

One thing I did remember to do was contact a man who raises German shepherds. Could he help? He answered my mail telling me to call him and I will.

Lily sits by the stairs looking up and waits for a cat to fall into her mouth. She knows they’re up there staring back from their own corner of darkness but she sees them.

What should I do about Lily? Is she happy comfortable at ease in this house? Are any of us? Jerry asks me, do you know what I don’t like about you working at the bar Thursday and Friday night? Pointing at Lily who is waiting by the door to go out, he says: That.

Fine, I think. When I go to bed I am taking all the cats’ arms and legs and locking them up somewhere so they will NOT stand by the bedroom door to meow meow meow.

Looking down at my feet now I remember when Lily snuck behind me on the couch and draped her head over my shoulder. I see her rest he head on things all the time. I think her head is too heavy for her neck. Her poor, skinny neck. Does she know she’s sick?