Love makes us turn around and face ourselves.
Sometimes we keep spinning for awhile.
That’s OK. When we fall down in the grass, there will be cats to catch us. Or at least laugh at us, by which I mean laugh with us. Actually, I mean laugh for us.
If you want to know what someone stands for, watch what they love and what makes them laugh. The two will not be unrelated.
I witnessed this particular stand-up routine recently while observing CAT. At risk of detonating the Understatement Of The Year, be it known that CAT loves CAT.
“Loves,” yes, but not in the way that you love Cinnamon Toast Crunch, or I love Jimmy Fallon, or CAT loves decapitating toy mice, or Jonathan loves using the word “shmoldie.”
More like “loves,” in the way that the ocean loves the moon, or the soul loves mercy, or CAT loves pickled herring, or Jonathan loves using the word “shmoldie” multiple times in a single sentence.
CAT loves CAT.
CAT loves CAT beyond the speed bumps and speed limits that slow most of us down. CAT loves CAT enough to lasso the moon, leave the last freeze-dried shrimp in the bowl, lean ever-so-carefully to the left so that the best sunshine can coat CAT like glitter.
CAT thinks CAT is, in fact, coated in glitter. And when you’re so fully loved, you are.
(At this point, CAT cackles, “keep your gookin’ glitter! Coat me in parmesan!” We will take this request up with management.)
CAT’s love for CAT has the effect of making CAT a little goofy. OK, that was the actual Understatement Of The Year. We’re talking gooffulent. We’re talking goofoonery gone wild. We’re talking galumphing hordes of goofage.
CAT will enfold herself around CAT like a quesadilla. CAT will fall off her tower and fall from all semblance of dignity just to get to CAT faster. CAT will gush such goop CATward, it’s all you can do not to giggle.
Love should always make you giggle.
CAT loves enough to let her stuffing show. But love, and the world laughs with you.
CAT is quite unalone in this unabashed adoration stuff.
Tabby’s Place may be a “cage-free sanctuary,” but I’m afraid we are a “goof-rich sanctuary.” And just when we think we’ve exhausted our daily budget of goof, someone raises the vibration.
(At this point, CAT chortles, “shouldn’t someone be out there raising money for meatballs?” He is not incorrect. CAT, please don’t tell Jonathan I’m fooling about with the blog when I have loftier matters to which to attend. Or if you must tell him, at least soften it with ample usage of the word “shmoldie.”)
That someone just might be human.
It might be a sanctuary associate who big-heartedly, breezily brings home a foster kitten, expecting the usual — hijinks! lowjinks! less than 40 winks a night! extraordinary volumes of excrement! love! valor! compassion! teary-cheery goodbyes upon inevitable adoption!…
…only to find herself living the inscrutable: a kitten whose needs are nuclear, whose body is betraying him, whose time is short, whose moment is now and only now.
All at once, with no time to shed her hoodie for a cape, our foster mama will foster something that seems not-of-this-earth, because it isn’t. Knowing the hour is late and the stars themselves are weeping, she will hold this fading dreamchild with the full force of Love. She will shun sleep and forget food, bond in leaps and bounds that transcend time, cherish a single bony creature as though he were the best creature, the holiest creature, the only creature that ever lived.
And if he sighs his last, she will love him even more. Forever. She has chosen to have a planet-sized piece of her heart removed. Forever. She will weep without fear of judgment. She will tell his story for all who hear.
She will never be the same.
We will see her truest colors.
And, if she’s brave enough, she will see her own tear-thrashed face in the mirror, and she won’t hurry to wash her weariness away.
She will gaze into her own eyes and see the full community of love — CAT and CAT and Jonathan and you and me and all the saints and angels and even CAT — and she will spin with wonder.
And then someone will taptap on her door, with a kitten in their hands: “Can you foster this one?”
And she will sob, and she will laugh, because we inhabit a universe where Love’s only medicine is more Love, and the only Love worth living and spending ourselves and shmoldeying ourselves for is the kind without limit.
The kind that empties us, makes us fall off our perch, makes us look ridiculous, fills our sails.
The kind that asks for our last bite of macaroni and cheese, punctures our pride, demands our depths, gives us back to ourselves whole, for the very first time.
The kind that shows everyone who we are, naked in our outrageousness, unvarnished in our affection, willy-nilly and helpless-silly in the goof and the grit and the grace that give life its meaning.
The kind that makes us hit the ground, disoriented.
The kind that sets us on our feet, full of strength and dignity.
The kind that loosens our laces and lets us know we are alive, and we belong to each other, and it’s safe to laugh with each other and for each other.
Always for each other.
(At this point, CAT crows, “Schmaltzy lady! What next, you gonna burst into Celine Dion songs?”)
I just might, CAT. But you should know that this schmaltzy lady laughs louder and loves bigger and even looks into my own eyes with an iota more compassion because you loved me.