If only we had any idea what’s going on.
If only we had any idea what’s going on, we would be astonished one hundred percent of the time.
If only we had any idea what’s going on, we would look a lot like CAT.
CAT looks the way CAT looks because CAT looks at the world through clear eyes.
I do not mean the precision of her vision, which even in the case of mint-condition kittens is less than we’d expect. Unlike upright citizens like you and me, those eyes on the ground don’t see fine detail. This is why cats are unlikely to notice if you begin wearing jaunty ascots, or if you’re overdue to pluck your chin hairs. They specialize in shapes and shadows, the larger plotlines of perception. This is why they are prone to panic if you emerge wearing an enormous shower cap, or bearing balloons.
They were born for the big picture.
They see too clearly to waste their time on wrinkles or warts or I Love Walruses sweatshirts.
They perceive, which means they receive.
But even among such artisans of attention, some cats are gifted with exceptional receptors. Which brings us back to CAT.
CAT commands attention for many reasons.
She is a survivor, the song that played on when suffering shut down all the radio stations in her country. She is the river under the desert, the DISEASE-defier who beseeches every succulent, “bloom.”
She is almost sylvan in her beauty, a forest nymph who glimpsed a cat once and said, “I’d like to inhabit that shape.”
She is as silly as sixteen Will Ferrells and equally brilliant, a genius of physical comedy and psychological intuition. (“The humans are heavy. The humans are gray. I shall become light and lilacs. I shall do this by chasing my tail until tireless.”)
She is the Titania of Tabby’s Place cats, fairy queen who fell from a hopeless situation into a midsummer night’s dream. She has rewritten rotten old ruts into a personal Shakespeare in the Park in which everyone has a part.
She is a student of philosophy, equally at home in many paradigms, but most convinced by Squirrelism, the school of shock-tailed speed and storing up memories for winter.
She is, of course, that unparalleled pair of eyes, moons of mystery that know only two phases. If CAT is asleep, they are new, gathering strength for waking dreams. If CAT is awake (and, on some level, CAT is always awake), they are full, grapefruits gasping at the sun. There will be no sloe-eyed crescents here, no half-interested gibbous. You will find only excessive wonderment, the kind that can’t see a crescent moon without picturing sitting on it like a swing, legs dangling. You will find only overwhelmed superabundance, the kind that can’t get over the fact that “gibbous” is a word, and gibbons exist, and also gerbils, and also gelatinous poultry products numbering into the hundreds.
CAT’s hourly astonishments number into the billions.
And ultimately, CAT commands attention because CAT is paying attention.
If you think CAT appears overcome at all times, your perception is accurate.
If CAT’s astonished eyes bid you to come over, fall over, and stop jet-skiing over your own life, there’s hope for you in the foggy forest.
And if you’re finding your own moons a little fuller, you’re starting to get the idea of what’s going on.
What’s going on, is that we live in a world where people devote their entire lives to saving cats from hopeless situations.
What’s going on, is that we are surrounded by titanium tender-hearts who would wrestle walruses to comfort a stranger. (This is rarely necessary, but there may be unique occasions.)
What’s going on, is that every day we get to choose to forgive, which changes the contours of the universe.
What’s going on, is that every patch of peace purchased at the price of pride adds to the sum total of love across time and space.
What’s going on, is that even our barest-bones days are bursting with excess and excellence, polka-dot shower caps and Ethiopian jazz and large marshmallows and small kittens and old novels and new stories that we, even long past mint-condition, are invited to inhabit.
What’s going on, is that there is absolutely zero reason you, CAT, the walruses, gibbons, full moons or I had to be here, but somehow we were loved into existence, and now we get to love each other’s existences, and maybe even our own.
What’s going on, is that today, fragile and squirrelly forest children like you and CAT and me get to be each other’s oak trees.
What’s going on, is that life goes on, even after it falls apart, and then it expands, like CAT’s eyes, like the universe itself, like our hearts.
If we have even half a smidgen of an idea of all this, we might start to look like CAT.
We might start to look at our lives and our loves and our limits and our littleness in the light.
We might find that to be astonished all the time is to be accurate.
We might miss the chin hairs.
We might gain the moon.