Roberta has known the endless, colorless Monday.

Lucinda has lived the bleak and bewildering Thursday.

But Sunday came, and Sundays come to stay.

This is the moment when Roberta, Lucinda, and their esteemed associates will ask me to stop thinking deep thoughts and start making sundaes from salmon mousse, with a giblet on top. I will get to that.

It is Easter, after all.

But although the cats may forget their former days, we remember. We have to, because there are still cats out there, lost in the week.

The days run together when you are in a “hopeless situation.” There are no golden eggs to hunt, only crumbs of survival. They do not add up to cake, and you do not have a birthday. The last thing you want to do is look “tomorrow” in the eye. It may not look back.

So you learn not to look forward. You marry the moment.

As a blind cat, Roberta could not see her own small paws. She just put one in front of the other. She lived out in the elements, but she would not let them reduce her to rubble.

She was far, far braver than me.

I don’t know how cats do it. They are resilient, even rebellious. They believe in life, even when death steals their calendar. They keep moving towards a light in the window, even if no one ever called them by name.

Without sight, Roberta glimpsed the day she would rest, with warm-from-the-dryer fleece beneath her bones and three dishes of fishes within two inches of her face. She saw the day she would rise on four strong cinnamon legs. She saw herself at the center of a Community Room, where the “hopeless” are heralds of a better world.

She saw Sunday, and Sunday smiled back.

A world away, Lucinda started out with eyes like crystal balls and the expectation of adoration.

But sometimes the fog rolls in first thing Monday morning, and it makes itself at home.

Lucinda was born in Beirut. Too soft and small, she was wounded in a war zone. In her age of innocence, she was forced to see the jagged world. Her back leg would not survive her injuries.

But Lucinda would survive, with her dream intact.

Perhaps she was given such large eyes for a reason. Lucinda was brave enough to keep looking until hope became sight. She knew she had lives yet to live. She knew there was something stronger than suffering. She knew three legs are enough for dancing.

So she decided to dream, awake, until Sunday serenaded her by name.

Heroes in Beirut pulled her from the rubble. The dreamer took (literal) flight to New Jersey. The broken kitten landed in love, and she turned it into a trampoline.

From the home of foster-angel Donna to Tabby’s Place, Lucinda has insisted on rejoicing. She twirls, feasts, and flops into your arms. She makes sure everyone feels as fully alive as she does. It is the right of the reborn, the radiance of the rescued.

It is now her full-time job … in her forever home.

Lucinda saw Sunday, and Sunday smiled back.

There are as many Sundays as there are survivors at Tabby’s Place. “Saving cats from hopeless situations” is not a nice idea that you embroider on a pillow. It is a fist in the face of death. It is the radical refusal to give up on anyone. It is the small, calm voice of love, when “hopeless” howls like a hurricane.

It is the eye that sees Roberta, and Lucinda, and you, and me.

Until every cat dreams safe in her own sunbeam, Tabby’s Place will be their Sunday.

There are songs after pain. There are kisses after wounds. There is life after the longest wait.

Happy Sunday, beloveds.

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