Fire your calendar, because today is New Year’s Day.
CAT just informed me of this, and I am not in the business of disagreeing with CAT.
CAT is not in the business of anything you might call “business,” which may be why he’s equipped to inform us of important matters. While you and I are either getting things done or feeling guilty about not getting things done, CAT is completely absorbed with the king of things, the only thing, the every-thing.
Which is: New Year’s Day.
It might be more accurate to say New Year’s Hour, because this is not a midnight event. (I have it on good authority that CAT is very much a midnight individual, fond of the moon and the meteors and the meat shnubbins left over from other cats’ midnight snacks, but I have yet to witness this myself.)
Somewhere other than Tabby’s Place, you might say that our man of the hour is an ordinary cat. Wrapped in the brown paper package of tabby stripes, even-tempered and middle-sized and content to ring in at the center of the bell curve by most measures, CAT is…common.
As common as a comet.
As common as a prayer.
As common as a day.
There are absolutely no common days.
There are also, in CAT’s syntax, no commas. There are certainly no periods. There are full regiments of exclamation points, but these are mostly clustered together by the hundreds at the end of pages-long paragraphs. Mostly, there is a breathless unpunctuated unparalleled unprecedented eruption of effervescence, because today is a day and we are all here together.
CAT has never quite gotten over that fact.
CAT was sent to make sure we get over ourselves long enough to stop overlooking our riches.
This is not easy work, which is why it’s a good thing that CAT is a “common” cat. Were he outwardly exceptional, pizzazzy like CAT2 or imperial like CAT3, we might suspect something. And we are shy egos, you and me, flash-feral the instant we sniff too much truth.
So CAT fizzes gently, seltzer swirled like a common prayer in a common cup. He’ll crawl into your lap just as you were about to rise, unfolding his shoulders like a lawn chair and looking at you like you’re the sunrise. You can’t exactly say “no” to his “yes,” and so you stay just a little longer.
And you find yourself longing for more moments like these.
On another day, CAT will choose the path of most resistance, which is to say the path that pranks yours, weaving directly in front of your harried Skechers until you simply must stop. But before you can ask, “what, CAT, do you want?”, CAT will transfigure into pure wanting, common craving, garden-variety greed for this moment, with you. Again, the sunrise-eyes; again, the honest affection; again, all the peasants on your to-do list will prostrate themselves before the king of all things.
(Although CAT, being a proper cat, wouldn’t mind being called the King of All Things, he actually loves his common name, so just call him CAT. OK, Your Eminent CAT.)
By the time CAT has cornered you in front of a cubby, you may be starting to catch on. Here you are, on a plain denim Wednesday, with a middle-sized brown tabby rubbing rhythms into your shoulder. There is a leak in your roof at home. The doctor wants to do more tests. You made your sister cry this morning, and the supermarket is out of Fig Newtons, and someone leaked your secret torrid crush on Emmanuel Macron.
And yet here, with CAT seeing the sunrise in your eyes, you have the feeling you’re at the beginning of all things.
Because today is, in fact, New Year’s Day.
It’s been New Year’s Day ever since the day CAT came to Tabby’s Place. CAT’s novel had almost been recycled at a public shelter — let the reader understand — but instead, he was suddenly given hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of common blank pages, and a common ballpoint pen to write whatever he liked.
On that surly burlap Tuesday, amid the noise and fog, a very ordinary cat fell into a very long novel where every character was set on loving very ordinary cats. Every stripe, spot, smudge and sorrow was grist for the mercy-mills. Every story was savored, shared around tables, set apart as something special. Every Special Need was nurtured. Every sweet or sweary mouth was nourished. (CAT, rather pure in heart, had never heard some of the words CAT4 used when dinner was late. CAT still gets the giggles over the word “nincompoop.”)
At their best, these beings extended the blessing to each other, too.
But CAT quickly realized that these characters had a very, very hard time turning grace inward. They hustled and they hurtled and they hurt themselves against the sharp edges of the day, afraid they wouldn’t get everything done before all was said and done.
And all the while, CAT, a cat whose story was supposed to be done — the big “done” — knew that it’s never all done.
It is always the beginning.
And if he loved them right, maybe even these stressed characters could begin to begin, too.
Maybe they could rise up singing. Maybe they could look up from their blues. Maybe they could look around and see that today is a day, the first day, the best day, the only day, and the only thing in the way of the sunrise is the myth that anything is ordinary.
CAT would like to challenge you to answer the following question: what, among the following is ordinary? Is CAT ordinary? Is the color of your daughter’s eyes ordinary? How about Zebra Cakes? The living mystery that is Shaq? The secret bonus whiskers between the whisker-whiskers and the eyebrow-whiskers on common cats? The highway system? Plaid? The secrets in the next chapter of your novel? Hands and the way they feel when held?
This day, a dreamscape between the sunrise and the starlight?
The fact that we haven’t been recycled but reborn?
Do we have any right to assume that any of this is ever old?
Do we have any idea how lucky we are to keep beginning?
On behalf of CAT, I would like to wish you a very, very happy New Year.
Let’s do it again tomorrow.