Cats know a thing or two about odors and vapors. (CAT prefers to call them “aromas.” CAT2 prefers to call them “scentsory abundance.” CAT3 prefers to call them “olfactory generosity.”)
Cats know a thing or thirty about waste.
Cats know nothing whatsoever about wasting odors, vapors, time, or the raw material of their raw, righteous lives.
Should you demand that CAT admit to wasted years, useless digressions, or meaningless suffering, you would be asking him to perjure himself.
CAT respects the judicial system and himself far too much for that.
CAT would greatly prefer to perdure himself. CAT can explain.
“Perdure” is a word I learned while glancing upon the giddy green Gain dryer sheets box. There it was, in the French translation: “Un parfum si agréable qui dure et perdure!” (Yes, my reading list is sophisticated. Join my book club, and next week we’ll tackle the notoriously difficult Cheerios box together.)
Leaving aside whether or not cats’ odors and vapors are always parfums agréables, cats’ power is to dure et perdure: to last and last.
Perdure prevails in our own language, but for some reason we default to “endure.” CAT does not approve of this. “Endure” is encumbered with the saggy backpack of suffering, as in “every day is nothing but endurance.” “I can scarcely endure CAT3’s invincible incompetence.” “How long must I endure living in a land of no liverwurst?”
“Perdure,” though, is perfumed with a wry smile. “Perdure” is durability plus delight. “Perdure” is profoundly feline.
CAT should know.
CAT came, as Tabby’s Place cats do, through the turnstile of a “hopeless situation.” These desperations have a thousand faces, but few are more gnarled and contorted than The Great Unchoosing.
I just saw you flinch. You know it, don’t you?
The Great Unchoosing comes for all of us, but none of us feels like anything but the only one of us when it happens. It won’t listen to reason; it won’t stick to the plot; it can’t respect the calendar, or the judicial system, or the soft unskinned heart of its prey.
The Great Unchoosing tells you there’s been some mistake, and you are not as safe as you once believed. The Great Unchoosing wrinkles its nose at your fondness for country music, and your affinity for neon orange, and the way you put 47 Sweet n’ Lows in your coffee, and your enjoyment of reading the Gain dryer sheet box.
The Great Unchoosing unleashes your very worst fears: you cannot be loved for who you are, as you are.
The Great Unchoosing lies, but like most liars, it is loud. Little wonder that only the weak-enough-to-be-strong perdure.
The Great Unchoosing gripped CAT like a stench. The people who had once chosen CAT could choose him no more. If love means choosing “yes” over and over again, CAT’s companions perjured their promise.
We make a point of not judging people who part with their cats. We can’t presume to know what our neighbors are enduring, what too-much is tackling them to the ground. It’s our place to be a soft place to land, not judge and jury. And so we were there to see CAT’s fall and promise CAT’s rise.
Like a dusty toy in an old claw machine, CAT tumbled back into the pile, $0.50 wasted on a futile attempt at “forever.” At least, so it would appear, if CAT saw life as endurance and pain as a raw deal.
But in the economy of cats, nothing is wasted. And in the economy of grace, raw deals are the raw material of resurrection.
And so CAT, rich in need and saddled with stink (ahem, parfum), did what perdurers do. CAT stacked his sadnesses together like Legos, built himself a castle, and gained entrance to a good, good story he could claim as his own.
If CAT condemned his past or his people, he would find many stench-dwellers to commiserate with him. Dung beetles of all species take a certain stinking comfort in rolling through the mire, rehearsing all the wrongs that wrung them out, and lambasting the wasteland.
But CAT came to perdure, to gain sheets and sheets of blank pages, and to write us into a new, new novel.
CAT came grinning — I am not speaking metaphorically — and glorying, rolling in our arms and rolling himself in a new aroma. They say cats rub against us to establish a “family scent,” and CAT earnestly wanted us to be his family.
The past, the past, the pitiful, painful, perjurious past, was no mistake. It had not been meaningless. All the smells and hells of rejection and dejection had gotten CAT here, and there would be no “here” without “there.”
CAT really, really, really loves the smell of “here.” Eau de Here would be his signature scent. Little had the Great Unchoosing know that it was only signing the contract for CAT’s conquest.
Little do any of us know that nothing is ever wasted.
If CAT had not been unchosen, CAT would lack his power. If every cat has several hundred special skills, each one has a certain signature gift, and CAT’s is no secret. CAT has been kissed with the power to choose.
To choose us so exuberantly, he makes us feel chosen.
To choose joy so convincingly, he makes us feel young.
To choose love so loudly, he drowns out the dung beetles and devastations.
To choose Here so heartily, he reminds us that There was necessary.
And so it happens that, once again, a ragged cat on tired paws is the one to lead us. Every time we cross one door, there’s another; every Great Unchoosing gives way to a greater safety; every raw egg and stale breadcrumb is an essential ingredient for tomorrow’s pie.
CAT is not going to miss tomorrow’s pie. CAT can already smell it across the kitchen.
I can’t guess what chapter you’re in, but CAT earnestly wants to remind you that it is not meaningless.
Today, your heart and your dryer and your coffee pot may all break. Your favorite cat may breathe her last. The Starbucks barista may misread your name and call out “Fatty? Fatty? Fatty?” when your Dragon Drink is ready. You may feel the fire and shudder before the stench of the great dragon called the Great Unchoosing.
Tomorrow, you may learn a new song in a dream, and your yard may burst with lilacs, and your sadness may lift like fog. Your lungs may fill with hope. You may be just sad enough to see someone’s tears and love them home. You may meet the cat who will command your heart for the next 20 years. You may enter your season.
None of this will be wasted.
Now I don’t presume to know how any of this works. We do not celebrate CAT’s past suffering, any more than we relish our heartbreaks, or hold the wet laundry of our pain up to our noses to breathe it in. I believe there is a Great Mercy at the heart of everything, grieved by our pain and nearer than breath when we feel forgotten. I believe every living creature is finally and decisively chosen by Love.
I believe we will all have to learn this over and over and over again.
I can barely believe anyone perdures without cats.
But here we are, together.
The world is terrifying and gentle, stinking and singing and strange.
We have so much to gain.