I have to break it to you.
CAT is not saving her fine China for the next time you come over.
And between now and then, they just might break it.
Don’t misunderstand me. Our dowager queen is greatly looking forward to your next visit. CAT is New Jersey’s most gracious hostess (this is admittedly not saying much). CAT would like little more than to see your sardine-mayonnaise casserole (you are bringing your sardine-mayonnaise casserole, of course?) on her Lenox.
But in the meantime, CAT is setting out her splendors for every visitor, every vagrant, and every ordinary day named Today.
Perhaps CAT has particular reason to bust out the good stuff. Her ladyship endured a long, lean season stripped of elegance. Life in a public shelter has a way of wearing off your pretenses and your defenses. CAT comforted herself with thoughts that even Her Serene Highness Martha Stewart did time in similar conditions, only to go on and reclaim her empire beside The Right Honorable Viscount Snoop Dogg.
But there are no oyster plates and certainly no pearls to be found in such a setting, so CAT had to improvise and compromise. If CAT could not surround herself with sophistication, she would be the sophistication.
Which, translated into Cat, means Love.
In the most inelegant circumstances, we’re told that CAT became a candelabra. Unsure of her own survival, CAT made sure everyone else knew their splendor. The duchess of devotion would light her last candles for whoever came into her cell, king or commoner or Keanu Reeves.
And then, all at once, the drawbridge dropped, and the chariot came, and the decree rang out across the land. Hear ye, hear ye: CAT was coming into her queendom. CAT was coming into her season. CAT was coming to Tabby’s Place.
If CAT thought she was coming to a gracious place setting, CAT had another thing coming.
But that’s just the thing about sophisticated souls: they don’t expect a perfect performance from anyone else. (Or even, in this case, basic table manners. See above re: New Jersey.) The most elegant individuals are precisely those whose demands are dainty, and small, and sweeter than a scone.
There’s a reason royals are addressed as “Your Grace.” For human queens and kings, this is aspirational, but at their feline best, those who reign are radiant with mercy. They live to love extra; they set out their splendors for the gutter-grifters in greatest need; they dash any thought of “deserving” into tiny pieces, fit only to be spread on crustless cucumber sandwiches. If you’ve staggered to their table, you’re an honored guest.
And so CAT would ask a lot of herself, but little of us. You could see it in her eyes from the day our eyes first met, even as our team was brushing her noble fur with a tiny toothbrush (the better to root out any reigning ringworm). CAT had charged herself with the task of charging everything to her own account, on our behalf. The cat we had saved would go to great lengths to make a great feast for all the great and little beings she could find.
This was very good news for gutter-grifters like you and me and Martha and Snoop and Keanu.
But there are dangers in being a dowager queen. CAT could not keep the lid on her teapot. CAT could not pace her pouring. CAT would not consult the calendar, scheduling her banquets so as not to run short on supply before the next delivery of quail eggs and cucumber sandwiches.
CAT would love us as though tomorrow wasn’t coming. CAT would twirl and whirl like a Pirouette cookie in our laps, ladling forth all her love, all her forces, all her gushing glory as if it were the final page of her story. CAT would be reckless in her radiance, spending the last cent of her sweetness on the first person to visit each morning, and then the second, and the third, and the thirtieth.
CAT would use everything up, every hour.
CAT would “waste” the fine China on the fools and hooligans and Todays.
Even if they break-danced all over her beauties.
Even if they broke the best teapot. (Here all eyes turn to CAT2, whose desire to go viral on TikTok have translated into highly experimental forms of dance not fit for Buckingham Palace. This is, of course, Buckingham Palace’s loss.)
Even if they drained it to the last drop.
Because that’s the secret that CAT knows, and queens and development directors and Keanus forget: there is no last drop.
The “last drop” is the first place to look for the next mercy.
The “last drop” is the finest place to learn true trust.
The “last drop” is best spent on the last creatures you’d expect, the ruffians and the humbly-bumblies and the anxious ordinaries with holes in their jeans and their hearts.
The “last drop” uncorks the next miracle.
So CAT is not saving up her snuggles, her Waterford crystal, or her expensive tinned mackerel from Portugal. CAT is not pro-rating her affection. CAT is running full-speed with no fear of running out.
I want to be like CAT.
I don’t want to hoard my dainties, saving my stories and my sweetness for some imagined someday when Bono comes over for songs and sandwiches, or CAT3 decides I’m worth his time, or Jonathan asks me to approach King Harald to build Tabby’s Place: North in Oslo.
I want to unleash my best ideas like a battalion of sea lions, oop-oop-ooping across the shore, trusting that more best ideas will come.
I want to sing and sigh over Today’s sunset, loving it like the last and first in history, trusting that it still happened even if I didn’t capture it on my camera.
I want to love Today’s cats and people with all the candles in my cottage, spending myself to the last song, trusting that songs and sweetness are renewable resources.
I want to believe that we only get “more” when we give “all,” anyway.
I want to break loose all the love like CAT, even if a few dishes get broken.
So who’s bringing the sardine-mayonnaise casserole?