If you came in here looking for a quick slice-to-go, I have bad news for you.
This isn’t that kind of pizza joint.
Don’t blame me, kittens. I just work behind the counter. CAT, who earnestly wishes we were some kind of pizza joint, set this policy.
Composed of no fewer than sixteen slices, each glistening with grease (don’t you dare let him see you blotting them with a paper towel; pizza calories are virtuous), CAT is a pie in full.
This was evident from the hour of his arrival.
As we furtively opened CAT’s carrier, expecting a concise calzone, out poured ten thousand pepperonis. (This is the moment when 100% of our residents write complaint letters to Jonathan, requesting that if I dare to mention metaphysical pepperonis, I should be removed from my position immediately. What is a “Development Director,” anyway, if not a purveyor of tangible protein?)
More accurately, out poured a tempest of toppings, not all of which were talking to each other.
A pert green pepper: CAT was handsomer than a hundred pizza chefs, and every cat worth his mozzarella knows that pizza chefs are the studliest persons on the planet.
A jalapeno with extra seeds: CAT had a bite. CAT could not be certain you were not a protein product yourself without a small sample of your self.
A drizzle of caramel sauce: CAT was commandingly sweet, the kind of “kind” that can untie all your anxious garlic knots.
A pepperoni: CAT was, after all, a cat, with a salty ego long since cured of self-criticism.
A meatball — not the usual pitiable beef-bit fragment made for fools, but an actual and entire, softball-sized meatball: CAT was well-rounded, able to discuss capitalism, the Fast & the Furious Franchise, the harpsichord, and squeeze-poultry with equal authority.
A pineapple — not a soggy yellow rectangle, but the entire festive tower of tartness: CAT was welcoming, tart with the vitamins of a warm heart and a hospitable mind.
A crabapple: CAT’s aforementioned bite employed all of his teeth. Can’t leave out the molars, which are also useful for processing processed meats.
A pickled egg: CAT had been preserved through peril, and CAT had preserved his inner protein, which is to say his panache and pizzazz and playfulness and patience with humans and long pizzeria lines and life itself.
A dollop of fat-free mayonnaise: CAT had squeezed through suffering. (The cats worked together to come up with the best possible metaphor for misery, and this was it.) CAT had seen the worst of what life on this meatball-planet has to offer. (The metaphor is so perfect, the cats should get a Pulitzer.) CAT had been hurt, and not by accident. (Never in the history of language has there been a finer analogy.)
A Buffalo chicken (entire): CAT had known fear, and given into it at times.
One bottle of Sriracha: CAT had felt the fear and lived anyway. In fact, he was doing it right now, in this pizza-less wasteland, determined to make it a bistro of bounty for himself and everyone he met. He would taste every meatball. He would taste many fingers (tragically few of them chicken). He would taste and see that bliss is ultimately for the brave, and bravery is the secret item on every menu.
A fortune cookie: CAT could not keep all his toppings to himself. (Except the meatballs. And the pepperonis. And the chicken. Also the egg.)
CAT had come to mend our menu.
CAT had been sent to this purring pizza joint to make sure we were careful with that spinning slicey thing, and with each other.
CAT had delivered himself to the door of Tabby’s Place as a pie piled with contradictions, and promises, if we’d hear them.
CAT promised us that cats and humans (and presumably also sea lions and wombats, although he shall have to taste them to be sure) cannot be loved in pieces.
It’s sure convenient to grab a slice from the counter, fresh and inviting. Choose from all those triangles, at your mercy on their paper plates.
Maybe your office-mate has one with black olives, the briny humor that bolsters your bad days. Next slice over, she serves up soggy banana peppers, the need to vent when you’re already spent. Pick a slice, or take home the whole pie?
Maybe your Dad’s top triangle is towering with mushrooms, his endless patience as you vent about the office-mate who vents when you’re spent. Uhh…can you pluck that piece and leave behind the one with the raw onions, all those un-asked opinions about tax reform and your dating history and the way they don’t make real music anymore?
Maybe your cat, your cherished cat, is a full three-quarters ricotta, sweet and soft and gentle with your toothaches and heartaches and life-aches. But then there’s that quadrant with the quail eggs, her short fuse and her long history with hinky habits around the litter box. Can you cut the circle?
Maybe you, yummy and yammering you, are a sixteen-slice situation of your own. You’ve got your sun-dried tomato sunny disposition and your roasted eggplant perseverance…but what of those sorry slices with anchovy anxiety and fetid green bean egotism and seaweed selfishness (not to mention your lima-bean loud voice and feta frizzy hair)?
Will we all be loved by the slice, our greasy bits left lonely on the counter?
Or will we dare to be cats and consume the whole moon?
Although they expect my resignation any hour now (see above re: metaphorical pepperonis, fat-free mayonnaise, and filing feta under bad toppings), the cats are with me on this much: love must be entire.
You must love the CAT who bites, in his biting as much as his lap-lolling.
You must love the Dad who pontificates, in his unconscionable opinions as much as his unconditional love.
You must love the neighbor who needles and nudges and natters on and on, in his needs as much as in his nourishing friendship.
You must love yourself, your stinking scrumptious self, in all your toppings and tumblings and troubles.
You don’t need to love all the pieces, but you must love the pizza enough to take it in full, as full as the moon, as full as the mercy that makes us safe to be our complete, cheesy selves. You must take home the whole pie. You must love unsliced.
Cats will have us no other way, and they demand the same.
They also demand literal, tangible, pragmatic pepperonis.
We’re working on all of the above.