There are very few things I can say with complete authority, but they include the following:
1. The Tabby’s Place family contains the finest human beings who ever lived.
2. Twinkle lights make everything better.
3. CAT has never spent a day of her life wondering who she is.
CAT has lived through days that were a hundred years long, but they have not made her question who she is.
CAT has lived through depths and deaths that pulled the rug from under her paws, but they have not made her question who she is.
CAT has lived through more and received less than any cat deserves, but this has not made her question who she is.
CAT was born an answer, and she has never forgotten this.
Would that we could say the same for the world, that pea-soup place that forgets cats and forgets its manners. CAT was born an answer, but she was born into the burbling stewpot that serves both feasts and fears. Some little peas are spared for a season, but it’s not long before every green thing gets smooshed and gooshed and whooshed into the quest.
As a little girl, I remember glimpsing a can of “Very Young Small Sweet Peas” on the pantry shelf, and getting tearful — I wish I were making this up — over how terribly sad it seemed that we were going to eat them, that they had been captured and canned in such a vulnerable state.
But a vulnerable state can be a place of promise for little peas. Even such a vulnerable state as New Jersey.
CAT’s questing, like most of ours, came without invitation. The day before, she lived among answers: armchairs and on-time meals, a home and a hearth and a human who hallowed her very breath.
Then the pilot light came on. The twinkle lights turned off. The hallowing human, by no fault of his own, could hold her no more, sent off on his own quest to a nursing home. The stewpot churned.
Everything in CAT’s life was in question.
At the ripe old age of AGE, CAT was a very young, very small pea, bobbing in the broth, blinking in the dark, questing at the age when she should be nesting.
Questing, but not questioning. For CAT was born an answer.
Tabby’s Place, twenty years into the business of being an answer, answered the call to cradle CAT. We were born for this. We are the silver bowl where all the smooshed and gooshed peas can party again. We are the World’s Best Cat mug where thin soup swirls back into smiling stew. We are the ebullient epicures who hold each individual pea up to the twinkle lights and say, “this one is different from all the others. This one is a masterpiece!”
We are on a quest to answer every cat’s question with “indeed! Definitely! Boundlessly! Forever! Cento percento!”
But CAT was born an answer. This pensive pea had packed her own “yes.”
No, she was no longer owned. No, she was no longer Person’s cat. No, she was no longer a nightly viewer of Wheel of Fortune, or a snoozer on ragged flannel shirts, or any of the secret identities she’d shared with her human.
No, she was no longer even a queen in the kingdom of the healthy, that silver spoon where no pea lives forever. For CAT came to us with unanswered ailments in the form of DISEASES, any of which could level a lesser little pea.
But CAT was still CAT, and CAT was beyond question.
Self-assured and selfless, CAT concerned herself with everyone else in the pod. Did someone need soothing? CAT was there. Was someone whirling too fast to visualize world peace? CAT could help. Were several someones simply in need of a green-glitter gaze, a reminder that there is more to the feast than fear? CAT put them on the front burner.
CAT, young as hope and old as mercy, was not afraid. Because CAT knew who she was.
CAT was a keeper of confidences. She was the cat who would tell no one that you cried into her fur, or that you belched magnificently in SUITE, or that you have a secret crush on Emmanuel Macron, or that you said that awful thing on the phone.
CAT was a keeper of light. She was the cat who greeted the dawn, greeted the visitors, greeted the green young tendrils of possibility.
CAT was a cuddler of sherpa. She was the cat who celebrated her senses, thrilled at the power of touch, blessed each blanket with a bright benediction that left it warm for the next cat.
CAT was the strand of twinkle lights on her own tree, and secondarily on ours.
CAT had been desperately lonely, but CAT was not reducible to lonely.
CAT had been rich and poor, but CAT was neither.
CAT was CAT, and CAT was born an answer.
Which just might be an answer to the rest of our quests.
When I look at myself, I see electrical storms. Heat lightning hurries across my brain: am I OK? Is my goodness in perpetual peril? What do I do when the peas bounce? And goodness, do the peas bounce and sometimes burst: Sometimes my kung-fu is amazing. Sometimes I make people feel hope. Sometimes my fundraising is an abject failure. Sometimes my writing is bloated dreck.
Which times do I get to feel OK?
Then I look at CAT, and I see twinkle lights, stretched across a warm stovetop. There is a quest that never ends, but no question: CAT is OK. CAT’s goodness is evergreen. CAT has been young, and CAT is old, and CAT is young forever. CAT is not wondering who she is.
CAT is wondering when we will stop wondering and start just warming ourselves around the twinkle lights.
Even if we’re no longer owned.
Even if we’re no longer smooth.
Even if we’re no longer young, small, or sweet.
We were all born answers. And on the quest we share at Tabby’s Place, our worth is beyond question.