CAT came along all bungled up.
Mangled up.
Grief-spangled.
But he was ours, and that was enough.
Sometime in time gone by, CAT had loved life. Kittens always do, whatever their age. Even grief-spangled cats find the road.
But it’s no easy road when you’re a star-crossed lover of a sharp-edged world. And this was the only world CAT had been given.
You don’t need me to tell you that the world whirls us all, making tie-dye of our tidy ginghams. Before seven o’clock this morning, you yourself had survived no fewer than seventeen sorrows, most of which you’ll probably never share with a living soul. To breathe is to be baffled by the loneliness and loveliness that slow-dance through every season of every life.
But the world had a particularly sloshing time with CAT. STORY. By the time his time came, his triumph-time, his Tabby’s Place time, the clock had run down to zero on his zest.
He had nothing to offer but the ocean of ache.
He was too sore to slow-dance in our arms, too weary to do anything but wonder if this was the last dance.
He was unkempt and unashamed, empty and exhausted, seventeen sorrows shy of that swamp from which there is no return.
You know the swamp of which I speak. You have walked its shores. You have dipped your feet into its thick brown water, if you could call it water. More accurately, you have had your feet forcibly dunked, like dismal Oreos, over and over and over again. If you’re reading these words, you’ve been given grace enough to run free into the forest. But you know and I know that it might have been otherwise.
The greatest movie of all time, The Never-Ending Story (no, this is not up for debate) most poignantly captured the Swamps of Sadness. Raise your paws if you, too, count it as one of the most traumatic moments of your entire childhood when Artex the horse lost hope so completely, not even his hero-boy Atreyu could save him.
But cats, unlike horses, do not lose hope.
And life, unlike movies, even the greatest movies of all time, does not let Those Who Are Loved sink.
So when CAT arrived, all threadbare hope and sunken shrunken zest, it mattered not that he offered naught but need.
He was ours, and that was enough.
He was depleted.
He was ours, and that was enough.
He was long on loss and short on sparkle.
He was ours, and that was enough.
He was not a Scottish Fold or a Turkish Angora, not a poster cat or a commercial cat or even a particularly clean, calm cat.
He was ours, and that was enough.
He had nothing to commend him to us, no certificate of authenticity, no recommendation letter from Dr. Eugene Buddle-Lubbers the Provost of Purrs, no sensational achievements, no righteous resume, not even a sleeve of Oreos with which to bribe us.
He was ours, and that was enough.
Because the moment CAT came into his moment, his mercy-moment, his Tabby’s Place moment, he belonged to someone — more accurately, a sea of someones.
We’re a strange society of unicorns and uncommoners, no doubt. Even the mysterious iridescent squid at the bottom of the ocean, even the most tie-dyed Woodstock fossil, even Artex and Atreyu, would tilt their heads to make sense of Team Tabby’s Place. This is a kingdom of quirk, a land of loop, a carnival of compassioneers who have each, in their own way, gone the long walk of longing for belonging.
Perhaps that’s why CAT was immediately, irrevocably, incandescently enough.
With nothing to his name but his name, no signature except the paint-prints of God, CAT came.
CAT came along, and CAT became ours.
And in the arithmetic of grace, belonging to someone is entirely enough.
We would not love CAT because he was valuable (although he was, far beyond rubies, far beyond white horses and Oreo cheesecakes and all the honorifics that ever made anyone feel terrific…for five minutes, as is the limit of accolades’ powers).
CAT would be valuable because he was beloved.
He belonged.
And, being Tabby’s Place, we would go long, go all in, go all the way to the bottom of the swamp to get our guy free. Because at Tabby’s Place, even if you lose your last sesame seed of hope, you’re not going to drown.
Or, more accurately, you just might. You might drown, and wail, and worry, and whirl like a blinkered blender with the “puree” button stuck.
But you won’t stay stuck.
Because you belong.
And somewhere along the line, no matter how strange and scared and scarred and spacey you may be, you’ll start to believe.
You’ll believe that you deserve kindness.
You’ll believe that your “bizarre” is your “beautiful.”
You’ll believe that you have several more than seventeen sweetnesses yet to look forward to, so you’d best get to hoping, and healing, and hopping like a toad towards the new arrivals in need of rescue.
You’ll believe, even when your hair is frizzy and your counter is full of crumbs.
You’ll believe, even when your tail is kinked and your veterinary bill is vast and your litter box habits are imprecise.
You’ll believe, when your fears are fifty feet tall and your habits hobble you and your hands are empty except for a blue Ball jar of questions.
The answers just might come in the form of a crumpled king disguised as a cat.
Because the truth is, no one’s hands or paws are empty. The emptiness itself is a gift. The honesty is a halo. The hopelessness is a help to the uncommoners around you, whose common kindness is their highest calling. And as long as we all belong to each other, we’ll keep trawling
CAT came covered in cost and loss, all the better to cover us in our own calling. If he had no needs, we would not be needed; if he had no longings, he could not belong to us.
But from that very first hour, he was ours, and that was enough.
And you, reading these words? You’re ours, too.
And we’re yours.
And together, cats and humans, we’re going to trawl each other from the swamp over and over again, with seventeen salty songs on our lips.