We deal in inherently unstable materials at the Tabby’s Place Laboratory.
This is our glory. This is our grief. This is our calling.
This is unavoidable.
We have all seen the wet eyes and quivering lips of new loss. These skinned hearts show up regularly at Tabby’s Place, with half-cases of cat food, half-bottles of medication, and whole-throttled vows: “I can never have another cat. I just can’t go through this again.”
I always hope that time will soften their oath. But who can blame them?
We deal in inherently unstable materials at the Tabby’s Place Laboratory, and some would say this makes them unsuitable materials. We are the open-eyed fools who rush into love we will outlive, with no suit of armor, no galoshes, and no combination lock on our hearts.
Which is just as well, since cats are crackerjack safecrackers.
Like every cat we’ve loved, CAT is not particularly stable. Oh, she’s calmer than most, a milky bowl of chowder among chalupas. She’s PBS to CAT’s TruTV. She’s the Brandenburg concertos and scones with clotted cream after a night at CAT2’s rave.
But don’t call her stable. Stable things belong behind protective coatings, under glass, frozen in amber.
CAT is too far alive for any of that.
Being fully cat, CAT is aware of the ways one’s world can alter. It was mere moments ago, on the geologic scale, that her sturdiest monuments were rocked in moments, tumbling her from PASTPLACE into our canyon.
Moments have continued to congeal and disperse ever since, introducing her to the ineffable (volunteers who were born to brush her; four o’clocks that keep coming, with fish mush from mercyland) and the insufferable (cats who insist on hosting raves at four o’clock in the morning; birds who do not have the decency to land inside the solarium for proper experimentation).
Most days, CAT maintains a baseline of magnificence, grateful and gluttonous for the good. Some days, CAT does not rock, roiled or rolled by DISEASE’s meaner moods.
On no day, does CAT consider the odds, consider CAT2 odd, and consider that perhaps she should be more careful.
Tomorrow, the brush may break, or the favorite volunteer may be called away to a Florence and the Machine concert, or Tabby’s Place and its inhabitants might be swallowed by a sinkhole filled with dinosaurs and former Saved by the Bell actors.
Tomorrow, the person whose eyes remind CAT of the sky may be gone. Tomorrow, Purina may pivot its product line towards Casual Feast. Tomorrow, CAT2 may thrust his chin in the air like Napoleon and whisk his friendship away like a tablecloth.
Tomorrow, all the certainties may melt like margarine. Tomorrow, someone may insult CAT with an offering of margarine.
But today, CAT only knows one way: to love the unstable, unconditionally.
This is dangerous and perhaps foolish business. If CAT keeps loving us without any reasonable limits, where will her heart run if all the elements explode? If CAT keeps slathering the moment with joy, what will happen if it drops like a half-scone to the floor?
If we outlive CAT, will this be the loss that leaves us lost?
Only the armored can avoid such questions.
But CAT is not particularly stable, when means she can be sensationally naked. (CAT is trying to get the band Sensationally Naked to headline his next rave, but that’s another blog for another time.)
If cats look fragile, it’s only because they’re honest enough to show the underbelly of the universe. Yes, their years are fifteen or twenty; yes, their kidneys are kindling for cruel diseases; yes, they can be devastated by delayed meat products.
But the same soft tummy thrums and gurgles under everything good.
We are the would-be knights who paint boulders and obtain insurance and sign on dotted lines. We want the iron-clad. We want the get-out-of-loss clause.
We think we do. But those are half-hearted wants. We really want whole-grain life, the hearty heart that keeps us alive, unarmored, naked, sensational.
Which means we will lose.
We will get lost.
Our eyes will fill with tears, and our cupboards will fill with gourmet cat foods that our fading ones won’t eat, and our books will fill with stories that end sooner than we can understand.
But the Great Story will carry us all.
And as long as we give ourselves to the unstable elements, we will never live without love. Because if there’s one thing we learn, loss after loss after disemboweling loss, it’s that there will never, ever, ever be a shortage of cats and people to love.
Or to be loved by.
And in this star cluster, that’s a fate far sweeter than stable.
Funny thing about star clusters. Persons far smarter than me would explain that they’re not particularly stable, either: they may disperse after several million years.
“Stability” is relative.
We’ve chosen to make fragile cats our nearest and dearest relatives. Let’s not clot up the wonder with worry.
We have a spaceship to fly.