We have all known The Unknowing.
We have forgotten ourselves.
We have endured days and sometimes decades that have dislocated our dignity.
We have lost the path of cats. But we are never too far from that trustworthy trail.
I only wish I had to elaborate on all of this. But the truth is, you know exactly what I mean.
The wrong year or fear or relationship or reversal has left you leaking in all directions. Your situation has been so hopeless, your only hope was to grab the threadbare rope of surrender.
Clinging to survival, you cast off your fanny pack of extra granola bars. You thought little of tossing your journal, your Mister Rogers figurine, and your World’s Best Development Director mug. When the options are “travel light” or “travel into darkness,” you don’t worry about how much you have to give up. You just want to stay upright.
And you do. You do what you have to do.
But when the dust settles and you’re safely ashore, you look around and can’t find yourself. The sand is scribbled with sentences of all you’ve surrendered, and the list is long. It’s “survival” as far as the eye can see.
This is the time to see CAT gazing into your weary eyes.
CAT, being a Tabby’s Place cat, has known the howl of “hopeless.” On the rutty road today, he has been bitten by cats and smitten with no one. He has been treated as less than nothing, stripped of his nearly-nothing, relocated from the ragged ground where he once stood tall.
Cat has been as distressed and disoriented and dislocated as you have. Served with papers from DISEASE and THING and THING, he has lived the equivalent of five divorces, thirteen volcano-tornadoes, and several dozen appearances on Naked And Afraid. He has taken the renowned Holmes-Rahe Inventory, and read that he has an 80% chance of stress-induced “breakdown” according to statistical prediction models.
The waves have broken upon him.
The breakers have busted his health.
But CAT has not broken himself into chocolate squares in exchange for the s’mores of survival.
CAT has not pawned his dignity.
Dribbling, drooly demons may have mocked him at every turn. (We have all known our own dribbling, drooly demons.)
But CAT has remained unknown to The Unknowing.
Not that it hasn’t sought him out. The Unknowing is a starving darkness, always on the prowl for something whole-fat and wholehearted. The Unknowing has a nose for the lonely and the lost, the likeliest to leave themselves behind. The Unknowing would like nothing better than to convince every “hopeless” cat, human, and walrus on earth that the safest wager is to weigh your own wants and worth and wildness, and choose leaden survival every time.
Heavy with years and yearnings, CAT has remained lighthearted, and so remained himself.
CAT never lost his self-knowledge. CAT, chased from campsite to campsite, never lost his location. CAT, handcrafted of shag carpet, marshmallow mercy, and dignity, never hocked his worth.
CAT never gave up on love’s unwritten lyrics. CAT never gave up on the rumored existences of salmon shreds and second chances. CAT never gave up his gawky, gallant, generous, gushy goofus-doofus dignity.
You and I are at risk of forgetting our value if someone says “puce isn’t really your color.” We’re willing to peel off our powers in exchange for a discount on yogurt. On a bad night, we’d give up 38% of our integrity for a bonus episode of SHOW. We are terrified of meeting ourselves out there on the trail, with the salamanders and the soggy sandwiches and the surprises.
CAT never stepped off the trail. And CAT, Tabby’s Place’s blaze of glory, would like to remind us that the trail can be trusted.
Yes, even this trail. This sharky, snarky trail, where “good people” cross the road to unsee a hurting cat. This muddy, moaning trail, where terrible traumas trounce wonderful cats. This terrifying, thunder-throated trail, where disease and distress and diabetes and divorce and dairy-free cheese and dodgeball come to dislocate us all.
This is the trail where truth takes its stand. This is the trail where unlikely people run to, not from, fading cats. This is the trail where impossible mercies meet implausible kindness, and dead hopes rise alive. This is the trail that took CAT to Tabby’s Place. This is our location.
And this means that, no matter how many times our hearts and bodies and dreams may be dislocated, we get to keep ourselves and each other.
There is a big difference between “home” and “house arrest,” and the former may keep us on the move for most of our lives. CAT has known many lives (whoever assigned cats only nine was poor at math), many way stations, and many dislocations, but he has never un-known his true vocation.
He is a child of the trail.
He is a captain of his trials.
He is the neutron star who smashes the Stress Scale.
He is himself, and he will love himself and his people and his world until we all know our worth.
If grace has its way with him, CAT will be dislocated at least one more time, to the forever home that will delight in his dignity. But whether or not that door should open, CAT will own himself, known to himself as whole and wondrous and warm.
CAT has never been reduced to his circumstances. CAT has always expanded to a new circumference. And Planet CAT is not about to exit his orbit for anything as stringy as mere “survival.”
We’re invited to paw our way back to the path beside him.
We may lose our diaries and our diamonds. We may drop our pancakes and our plans. We will certainly be moved, love it or not.
But if we’re as savvy as CAT, we’ll always be at home. Because, as every realtor knows, the secret to home value is relocation, relocation, relocation.
When the night finds me, I want to be on the trail with CAT. When the moon rises, I want to be going his way. And when The Unknowing invites me to forget myself, I want to remember my place.
It’s here, with the hapless and the “hopeless” and the happy-to-be-alive.
It’s now, the only day that’s been dollopped into my bowl.
It’s with you, and CAT, between knowing smiles that remember everything.
We may not always stay upright, but we can always do right by each other. CAT knows.