There is one tragedy that Gopher will never experience.
He is immune. He is protected.
He is safe inside a specific burrow.
It’s not that Gopher has been spared life’s sorrows. Nobody makes it through a full decade on this planet without getting gnawed around the edges.
Gopher is ten, and like any fifth-grader, he has learned that picture books do not tell the whole story.
The long paragraphs leave him perplexed. He had a mother, and then he didn’t. He acquired a multitude of mothers and others at Tabby’s Place. He slept in a cuddle pile, with siblings who scattered to other sofas.
He woke up in a home of his own. One tenth of one century later, he returned to Tabby’s Place.
The little black cat was littler the last time we saw him, but in our eyes, he is still a pocket Gopher. The kitten of 2015 still flickers in his eyes. He still believes he can be pleasantly surprised.
The biggest surprise is that none of this is a tragedy.
Tabby’s Place is warm and unconditional. Gopher has never seen so many cats, which happen to be his favorite animal.
Drowsy strangers are now his second chance at siblings. They encircle him like a labyrinth. Gopher is at peace, underground in plain sight.
Gopher’s adoptive home was not fluent in hugs and kisses, so he taught himself the language of the burrow. He hides from touch without breaking eye contact. Please respect me.
We long to hold him. But we long even more for him to behold himself in our eyes, cherished without needing to change.
If Gopher were glib and easy, he would never glimpse this kind of love.
And that would be the real tragedy.
If you are a fail-safe, fool-proof, all-purpose crowd-pleaser, you will never know if people love you because you are perfect, or if they love you because they love you.
When you are everything to everyone, you don’t belong to anyone.
If you are unwrinkled, uncomplicated, unoffensive, and unflavored, unconditional love is impossible.
In order to learn that you can neither lose nor earn your friends, you need to be a little peculiar, or garlicky, or dorky, or antisocial.
Fears and flaws are tunnels to love.
A cat we can’t pet can be touched by absolute acceptance.
Gopher is a cat of few words. But in those golden eyes, where the kitten still lives, he speaks freely.
He feels safe in the pocket of slow-blinks. When one of his “BFF” (Befriending Fearful Felines) volunteers arrives, Gopher knows someone arranged their day around him.
If Gopher should ever let us burrow our fingers in his beautiful fur, it will not make us love him any more.
If Gopher should write a tell-all memoir called Shocking Things People Say When They Are Hangry, it will not make us love him any less.
This is Tabby’s Place. We dig deep, down to the layer where everyone is essential, and everyone is perfect.
Life on Earth may be a goulash of gifts and gristle. Comedy and tragedy try on each other’s masks.
But if we are as honest as Gopher, we will learn the truth of love.
Our “worst” side is where the brightest light lands.
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