They may protect our egos by pretending to need us, but cats can’t hide the truth: they are taking care of their caretakers.
Among their tireless and unsung services: believing we are all stars, listening patiently to our unbidden renditions of Smash Mouth’s “All-Star,” and giving us a receptacle for our love.
If you read this blog, you suffer from a chronic condition with no cure. You were born with a geyser inside, a veritable volcano, compassion that feels cataclysmic at times.
Your love does not have a dimmer switch, much less an “off” button.
It just…won’t…stop.
It doesn’t stop when you are in the supermarket, and you see an old man struggling to reach the All-Bran.
It doesn’t stop when you’re at karaoke, and you hear a young woman massacring “The Night Chicago Died.”
It doesn’t stop when everyone else is buzzing blindly, but you’ve just seen a cat flummoxed by fear.
It stops your heart. It stops your cash flow. It stops your scorn. It stops “not my problem” in mid-sentence.
It starts your engine. It starts your mornings. It starts your highest and best deeds, which are generally also the most invisible.
It probably started the day you were born.
It’s not going to stop.
Fortunately: cats.
Cats have heard Florence and the Machine’s plaintive lyric “tell me where to put my love!” and answered, “um, right over here.”
Cats have seen our volcanoes, made popcorn, watched for awhile, then nodded at each other before declaring, “we can help with that.”
Cats have surveyed our canyons, sky dived from their feline heavens, and declared, “we can fill this.”
Cats have made the decision to take us and make us the mercy-birds we yearn to be.
They make us alive. They make us stop what we’re doing and start doing what needs doing for someone whose only credential is that they can’t do it for themselves.
(OK, that, plus invincible cuteness, plus invincible appetite for provolone, plus the espousal of Lizzo’s “Juice” as a personal life philosophy. Actually, cats have many more credentials than all the pages in all the books could ever contain.)
And as true givers, selfless in every measure except meat products, they let us believe we’re the benefactors.
Sure, CAT is on the receiving end as we deliver life-giving fluid support. CAT depends on us for the liquid gold called insulin.
Certainly, CAT is caramelized with bliss when you brush her. Indeed, CAT counts on us to count and croon the qualities that make her our queen.
And let us not underestimate the matter of plating their pates and bringing forth the mysterious crunchymunchies that are sufficient proof of a benevolent Maker.
As “beasts in need” go, few outpace the Tabby’s Place cats. By definition, they are refugees of hopeless situations, end-of-the-road hoboes and hardscrabblers with nowhere else to turn. We saved their lives. Yes.
But they save ours hourly.
“Hopeless situations” don’t always look like crowded shelters or roadsides.
“Desperate circumstances” are more subtle than salamanders (and, CAT might note, not half as delicious; yes, he knows).
The end of the road can look very much like the end of a day when you’ve not been able to see over the treeline of yourself.
It’s volcanic agony to burn with love unneeded.
It’s a daily death to hurl tenderness into the abyss.
But it’s life itself to live for another.
And cats, brave enough to demand and kind enough to be “weak,” give us life.
When our compassion is too chalky or awkward to nurture our neighbor, still CAT will lap it like buttermilk.
When our empathy is ill-timed or erratic, shy or half-selfish, still it will land as soft as a prayer in CAT’s fur.
When the ache of the entire world boa-constricts our breath, and we can no more feed Yemen or save Ukraine than we can square a circle, CAT says, “be here. Untangle me. Un-hunger me. Unburden your big, breathless heart. I will take the full measure of your love.”
And the more your love flows, the more measureless it becomes.
Loving these little ones, you become not less, but more determined to deliver mercy everywhere.
You will welcome the stranger. You will clap for the quirky. You will feed the hungry in a thousand faces.
You just…won’t…stop.
And neither will the cats, the needer-nurturers who are always at our service.