Call off the cavalry. Silence the sirens. Cancel the Access Hollywood interview.
CAT is okay.
Let the record clearly state that CAT is superior to okay, as superior as cats are to congresspersons. CAT is to “okay” what taffeta is to tinfoil. CAT is to “okay” what Muppets are to mollusks.
CAT, supra-okay from her ears to her essence, is nevertheless okay with “okay.” CAT holds “okay” in her paws like a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, that most “okay” of cuisines.
“Okay” is not gourmet. “Okay” is far more precious.
“Okay” is an oily watermelon in a world like ours. The power goes out in winter. The doorbell rings at midnight. The supermarket discontinues your favorite string cheese.
Cats like CAT get cancer, and it stays, and it stays, and it stays.
CAT has been carrying that mean little hitchhiker so long, we have the luxury of forgetting. CAT, after all, is okay. CAT has excelled at okay. CAT has advanced degrees in okaytecture. CAT shows no sign of slipping from okay’s hand-knit hammock.
But CAT forgets nothing.
Perhaps this is why CAT holds her sandwiches so tightly.
With a body that’s not quite trustworthy but not in immediate danger, CAT feels the meaning of her own red blood. The river of life babbles under her stripes, and she yammers in harmony. There are few cats who will stare at you quite so intensely as CAT, fearless eyes full of spring water and spring-loaded love.
There are few cats so conscious of being okay.
Okay, being a thin slice of pepperoni, is easily punctured. When the valiant vet team arrives to inflict atrocities such as blood draws, CAT vacates okay for minutes at a time. So do all beings in earshot, which somehow makes CAT feel more okay.
But the atrocious healers leave, and CAT returns, and okay returns, a docile homing pigeon until it becomes a brutal buzzard.
We are in the business of chasing off buzzards at Tabby’s Place. We shoo death off our lawn, shouting Samuel L. Jackson’s favorite verbs in its face. We defy diagnoses and hustle cats back into the hammock.
In a way, everything we do here is a form of running alongside the river of life and shouting, “roll on!” And most of the time, under the kind eye of the Big Mercy, we all get to sit on the shoreline and share sandwiches.
The shoreline, not the glitter-city.
Sandwiches, not Lobster Florentine.
Okay, not exceptional.
Astonishing is rarely exceptional.
CAT has no desire to join the glitterati or the cognoscenti. She would accept a private audience with Guy Fieri, but otherwise she has no interest in anything particularly “interesting.” She wants to be okay, all day.
She wants the workday sun on her skin, just enough to warm the riverbank and toast the sandwiches. She wants stubby fingers in her fur, snuffly kisses from lovers in blue jeans. She wants tomorrow to be rather like today.
CAT’s meals matter, because they might just as easily have been borne away by a buzzard.
CAT’s sleep matters, because dreams are doors that open in both directions.
CAT’s comfort matters, because beady fleece Frozen blankets and jelly-red jingle balls were never inevitable in a world like ours.
CAT’s fiery eyes matter, because her best friends fall asleep while “okay” is still babbling, and someone must awaken them — us — to the exquisite ordinary, the sheltering sameness, the mundane mercy that matters most.
It is astonishing in a world like ours.
Most days, in most ways, this world of ours carries plastic trays of peanut-butter-and-okay.
Plastic, not platinum. Peanut butter, not caviar.
Living with questions and cancers, not leaping to some hologram-land where small mercies are snubbable.
Living on the shoreline, and singing songs about living water.
Living, and living, and living, and remembering that every living creature is astonishing.
CAT is waiting for us on the beach.
CAT is okay.