Happy New Year, Royal Family!

I hope December’s whirlwind wrapped you in peace. I hope the holiday hurly-burly has placed you gently back into your comforting routines. I hope you forgot to put away at least one snowman or Santa, so you will remember all January that sweetness stays in season.

I hope you know that New Year’s is Queen Prescott’s favorite holiday.

Oh, our silver belle is plenty fond of Christmas and Hanukkah. She’s already writing her Valentines. (It’s best to start early when you have an entire realm to lavish.) She never met a shamrock she didn’t like.

It’s just that New Year’s Day is so very, very…Prescott.

You might say Prescott is a connoisseur of days. You and I know that she is the most brilliant creature who hath ever trod the earth, but she’s wise enough to risk being thought a simpleton. She gallops towards each sunrise as though it were the first yellow ball ever to bounce over the horizon. The very existence of Hips turns her into a living “hooray,” day after day after day. She is incapable of remaining calm in the presence of her Ripple Rug, or a human forehead in need of bumping, or a love-offering of salmon cookies.

To Prescott, every good thing is a love offering.

When love directs the day, it can only ever be New Year’s Day.

Spend mere minutes in the presence of Prescott, and you’ll become a brilliant “simpleton,” too. Let the skeptics and cynics snort. Say a prayer that someday they may drop through the floor into deep delight. You and Prescott and I will be busy marveling that Hips and stars and belly rubs and bellies exist.

Marvel of marvels, we exist, here, together, at this particular place and time.

This time last year was so very different. Do you remember?

Our Prescott was in Rhode Island, unaware that the worst and best days of her life were lumbering her way. It wasn’t long after the last New Year that darkness fell upon our queen.

Prescott was not expected to survive.

Prescott drummed faint “air biscuits” as the life drained from her emerald eyes. Prescott looked each of us in the eyes and declared her love and gratitude even as she battled for breath. I was there, dear sponsors, and I will never forget it. The cat in agony was reclaiming the day even if it would be the day she died. Prescott was fully present in her pain, looking around the room and gazing love into every face.

I have never seen anything like it.

No one on the Tabby’s Place staff slept that January night. How could we? We had met a soulmate, only to be told by people wiser than ourselves that her injuries were “incompatible with life.” She would not make it to dawn.

There is a wisdom that makes fools of us all.

Prescott rose.

Prescott healed.

Prescott did New Year’s Day over. And now, she gets to do it over and over every day. Is it any wonder she looks at life as though she’s never lived before?

Is there hope we might live as wise and wild as Prescott?

A visitor once described Prescott as “the cat in a child’s drawing.” Our queen can’t imagine a greater compliment. Prescott is a living dream, because getting to live is the dream.

Shall we dream with our queen this year?

Dear sponsors, may each day leave you wide-eyed. May your same old oatmeal and family and job and even your same old face bring you Prescott-powered joy. We were given a day today. Tomorrow, more than likely, we will get another.

Because of you, Prescott will, too.

Thank you for your unconditional love and unfailing generosity, beautiful sponsors. Prescott and I love you more and more every New Year’s Day.

With affection and gratitude, your correspondent,
Angela