Marco, little marzipan cat, are you a dream?
Your blue eyes have seen war, but your heart is as open as the sky.
You are in the fight of your life, but you trade armor for trust.
Waves of peace emanate from every soft wisp on your head. Judging from your gentleness, one might guess you’d had it easy. You look like the Fancy Feast cat, accustomed to giblets in crystal.
But your story meets your sweetness in a head-on collision we cannot reconcile.
Every Tabby’s Place cat comes from a “hopeless situation.” Those familiar words are too small for your story. You did not come to us from a shelter. You were not found loitering behind an Arby’s. You were “abandoned in a war zone.” This is not a euphemism. This is Beirut, Lebanon. You have seen things our minds cannot paint.
This does not compute.
Tabby’s Place takes five percent of our cats from overseas. But numbers were not on the minds of the heroes who pulled you from the rubble. Any reasonable calculation would suggest they should save themselves first. Marco, you met actual angels. They rearranged continents to send you to safety.
We would have welcomed you just the same if you had blazed with anger, every white-hot hair frizzing with fear. You have survived a blocked bladder and a broken jaw. You have experienced air travel with no ground beneath your feet. You have right and reason to be tense.
But Marco, your anger is missing.
You are a cumulus cloud, the sum of every kindness that ever kissed your head. You won’t tell us if you remember the nights of thunder or the days before you had a name. You have chosen to forget. You have chosen to forgive.
You are the entire jar of marshmallow creme, and your mission is to sweeten this sad world. You will not talk about your own sadness.
Fragile as you are, we did not want to dip you in lime sulfur. But you had psychedelic ringworm, the kind that glows in a black light. There is only one treatment for this dastardly fungus. You forgave us in advance.
As you were lowered into the therapeutic stench, you did not bare your teeth. You bared your heart. You mewed, as mellow as if this were a bubble bath at the Plaza.
We realized we were in the presence of greatness. We promised to do right by your trust, Marco. We promised things that are not ours to give, like a permanent address on Easy Street.
Your little body had other plans.
You made it out of the war zone, but a new front churned inside. A blip on your blood work became something more. Your bile acids were not getting better. A CT scan churned up a diagnosis that dropped us to our knees.
You had a liver shunt too large for medical management. Your ammonia levels were ascending. This was leading somewhere worse than a war zone.
We had two choices. We could pursue a costly, uncommon surgery — the first of its kind in 4,500 Tabby’s Place cats.
Or else, we would face a day where we would call your name — “Marco?” — and hear no answer.
There was no question. We will be bold as love. We will lean on our donors. Just like you always told us, Marco: trust is worth the risk.
We trust that the eyes reading these words will brim with tears and love. We trust that they will make you their Marco. This is what family looks like. At least, this is what the most uncommon family on Earth, the Tabby’s Place family, looks like.
Your surgery is November 13th, and we believe the whole family will be brave for you. You are the bravest of us all.
Soft little Marco, we know about the long recovery you may face. Post-surgical complications range from microvascular shunts to neurological issues that could land you in the ICU.
Your trust will not be in vain.
We will be with you through every skirmish and sunrise. The Tabby’s Place family will form a ring of strength around you, like a halo around the sun.
And after your surgery, the dream will be there when you wake. It is every heart that loves you. It is all your brave trust come true.
It is the sound of your name. Marco? Magnifico.