CAT’s world had splintered like brittle.
CAT’s solution was to shape-shift into shadows.
CAT was bent out of shape.
And that was the beginning of the beginning.
No cat in Tabby’s Place history has ever frolicked our way through fields of flowers. There have been no jump-roping, easy-loping journeys here, no happy rides on the kindergarten bus.
By definition, Tabby’s Place cats are travelers through “hopeless situations.” And while they all wear their pasts differently, each one has been shaped.
And some of them, like CAT, really, really want us to know it.
If CAT2 was a neon ball of Play-Doh with just a few happy dimples, and CAT3 was glitter Silly Putty, stretched like glamour-spaghetti, CAT was a heavy slab of clay, quaking on the wheel.
CAT’s world had turned so quickly, no noble planet could keep up. She’d lost her person, the face whose shape she knew in the dark. She’d lost her queendom, the home where she’d carefully placed all her spare hairs, the one that smelled like safety and herself.
She’d lost the thing we all think we need most: the reasonable expectation that tomorrow will behave like today, and all our days will hold hands in a sturdy chain of comfort.
But the chain was about to break.
And CAT was about to bend.
CAT watched helplessly as the links of her life slipped loose and clattered to the floor. And what a floor! This Tabby’s Place was half discotheque, half mental asylum, half hospital, half cathedral, one hundred percent mercy. (Feline math is superior to ours.)
But “mercy” has a whole bunch of bizarre little figurines on its desk, and it’s not always easy to see the stories behind the shapes.
CAT couldn’t quite wrap herself around this new story, not yet, and so CAT bent like a pipe-cleaner into herself. Spiraled into the tightest possible orb, she circled her wagons and circled “NO” on our love notes (“We like u! Do you like us? Yes/No/Maybe”) and circled her own name as the wheel spun madly on. She bent under blankets. She developed a bent for vole impersonation.
She was bent out of shape.
And so, love bent low, which is what love does.
We got on the floor and in the foxhole and on the wheel with CAT. Our volunteers — young ones and brave ones, wise ones and ones long past the age of being comfortably “bendy” — took on CAT’s shape.
If CAT said “not today,” they kept quiet vigil.
If CAT said “OK, but you play with your clay and I’ll work on mine,” they gave her the dignity of distance.
And when CAT said — astonishing her own ears as the words came out — “maybe,” their fingers formed bells and flowers and smiley faces on the soft clay of her soft fur.
CAT had forgotten that she had soft fur.
CAT had forgotten that she had a soft heart.
But all along, her old heart, her good heart, her true heart, was being shaped. And the day came when the wheel slowed, and CAT glimpsed her life, and to her own amazement she realized, “I’m in pretty good shape.”
(It was at precisely this moment of revelation that CAT5 commenced a rather poor rendition of “I’m In Love With The Shape of You.” But by this point, CAT had come to terms with the fact that 100% of her roommates are…bent.)
This is, of course, not the end of the story, because stories are as bendable as lives. CAT is not a shiny statuette today. The clay is still soft; the days still spin between a sense of safety and terror-all-around. Some days, CAT marinates in mercy; some days, CAT still freezes in fear.
Some days, CAT and you and I still get bent out of shape. This starts even before our first ride on the kindergarten bus, and it doesn’t stop.
But it just might be the best news.
If you can get bent out of shape, that means you’re made of bendable material. And that means, if you can get bent out of shape, you can also get bent back into it…or into an entirely new shape that’s still a true shape, a you shape.
You, like CAT, are mercifully malleable. The wheels will turn and the wheels will crack and the wheels will fall right off your predictable life, but you will keep bending into beginnings. You must only keep your heart soft.
Take it from CAT: you’re a Twizzler, not a Dum-Dum pop. You’re a snow leopard, not a stone pillar. You’re breath and sinew and the fire of the divine, not a spreadsheet.
(Fire Of The Divine is also the name of Kozmo’s Meat Loaf tribute band. He would do anything for love, but he won’t calm down.)
You are the tin foil that once housed the world’s best peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Your purpose has changed; you are now meant to become a swan. Or an alien. Or a magnificent hat, fit for Fenek’s secret French luxury brand Fenique. Or all of the above over the course of one second-grade lunch period.
Children and cats remember that bendable things are the best.
Who knows what blessed bends in the road await us all, just a few miles ahead?
Not me, not you, not CAT. Which puts us in pretty good shape for some pretty merciful surprises.