Oh, February fourteenth, you freighted day, you.

With so many red velvet follies and long-stemmed feats of sappiness afoot, it’s a good thing we have cats to keep us well.

I don’t need to tell you that Valentine’s Day is a cauldron of feelings.

You feel the love, past, present and — please, please, you pray — future.
You feel the void of love.
You feel the resentment at being told today is THE day of love YES TODAY NOW HURRY FOR ONLY $19.99 PLUS TAX.
You feel the empathy for the odd and under-loved and over-loving.
You feel out of control of your own heart, gushing out love at great personal cost, for your near ones and your feline ones and all the wounded ones of this wounded world, because that is just the sort of tender heart you have.

And the cats and I…the cats and I are glad that you’re equipped with a heart so enormous and fragile and ferocious in its love.

Valentine’s Day is just one more item on the infinite list of Things Over Which Cats Are Not Stressed.

This is not to say that Valentine’s Day is not notable. You bet your teddy bear it is. It’s notable not because it’s Valentine’s Day, but because it is a day, and a day is a day for love YES TODAY NOW HURRY. To love is today’s most urgent item.

Results not guaranteed. Urgency undiminished.

We are rich in love at Tabby’s Place, from the Community Room to Quarantine and out into the feral fields. Consider Suite A’s most indiscriminate lover, wild-eyed Stetson. The youngest and scrappiest black-and-white blaze of affection on his planet (and make no mistake: Stetson is of intergalactic origin), Stetson loves life so hard he sometimes scares it. He will frolic with more gusto than galumphing hordes of Guy Fieris, and he would love for you or Adam or that spider in the corner to play with him, to return his zesty love of life.

But if you don’t? S’okay. Stetson’s gonna keep on loving and playing and zesting it up, chasing his own tail or attacking the actual wall if necessary to keep his momentum. (True story.) He will not break his life-smitten stride. He will love until he overcomes all resistance.

Resistance to such mad mad love is futile.

If Stetson needed inspiration for persevering — which he doesn’t — he could look down the hall to Suite Special Needs. Kaycee, nine pounds of big eyes and big fears, has lived there for all of her adult life. Kaycee’s has been a complicated kind of love (not to be confused with a groovy kind of love), taken by too many as shyness or snark. She will sometimes snuggle with abandon, and other times hide in horror while shooting you dead with her stink-eye. She is both terrified and besotted with life. It is not easy to find a “yes” for such complicated love.

But nothing worthwhile is easy, so Kaycee calmly waited, big eyes and big fears and all.
And today — yes, the very freighted fourteenth of February — Kaycee finally went to her forever home.

Love’s been kind enough to clobber all kinds of obstacles around here lately. Love leaps FIV. Love laughs off gastrointestinal adventures. Love can’t say no to one, no two, no three cats at once. Love is satisfied with three legs.

I will elaborate on those adoptions when they’re official.

But today — YES TODAY NOW HURRY — love is alive.

With all its freight.
With all its feelings.
With all its many splendors.

Happy Valentine’s Day, you lovable creatures. Love urgently. Results not guaranteed. Do it anyway.

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