You do not need to shout to be heard.

You do not need to meet expectations to find love racing down the road to meet you.

And you do not need to be orange to be a “marmalade cat.”

Trust me on this. I have devoted my life to this field of study. Let other scientists handle quantum mechanics. Someone else can research hamster sociology, and whether processed cheese is immortal.

You will find me wriggling on the floor with the greatest anti-gravitational force on Earth: cats.

Four decades into this wriggling, I can confirm: you do not, I repeat, do not, need to be orange to be a marmalade cat.

You do not even need to be a cat to be a marmalade cat, but we will get there in a moment.

First, we need to stay here on the floor, for that is where we will find Marmalade.

Being feline, Marmalade is capable of suspending the law of gravity. When you are a cat, physics is only a friendly suggestion. If you are a marmalade cat, physics is basically double-dog-daring you to ignore it.

But if you are Marmalade, you do not need to show off.

Your esteemed colleagues — Aries, for instance — can manage wingless flight and other fancy stuff. You have nothing to prove.

Why beg, when your bowl is already full? You have access to some mysterious kibble geyser, apparently located directly under Tabby’s Place.

You have solid ground, or at least some sort of linoleum, beneath your paws. You have blankets soft as moss, covered in Mickey Mice and SpongeBobs. They were handmade by small geniuses called Girl Scouts. They invested hours in you, without ever seeing your face. All they needed to know was that you were a cat, and cats deserve to be soft.

When you are Marmalade, you are a tenured professor of “soft.” You spent your youth scrabbling along the perimeter of a prison, an actual prison. Food was uncertain and the elements unkind. None of this turned your heart to stone, or your fur to steel wool.

You are as downy as a gosling. You rejected the alchemy of despair. You pursued the hypothesis that there is no moment in history called “too late.” It is as fictional as gravity.

Hope, meanwhile, is indestructible. Hope is even less biodegradable than individually wrapped slices of processed cheese.

But we are dancing around the obvious question.

Why is a brown-and-white cat named for orange jelly? Marmalade is a marshmallow-nutmeg cloud. She is lush, plush, and gifted with longer eyelashes than a Labubu. But she does not have one stripe of citrus.

More than that, Marmalade presents none of the usual “juice.” Cats considered marmalade tend to be neon and needy. They are in the ninety-ninth percentile of shenanigans and bombast. Their meows, which are many, can mostly be translated into “look what I can do! Mom? Mom! Mom!”

Incidentally, they address one hundred percent of their colleagues (other cats, you, me, Jonathan, the HVAC repair person) as “Mom.”

Marmalade, meanwhile, blinks among the blankets. She does not beg for attention, nor fear she has been overlooked. Her paws neither pace nor pucker with doubt. She lets good things come to her.

She has lived long enough to know her powers.

When you are Marmalade, your softness summons sweetness. You lean into chin skritches from all kinds of hands, magenta-manicured or nail-bitten, elderly or adolescent.

You wear neutral hues, because kindness is your color.

You came to Tabby’s Place, which proved your hypothesis: good things happen to quiet cats.

You are not orange, but you have immeasurable zest.

You know you were made by love, from love, and for love, and that is the measure of a marmalade cat.

And this is the news that will surprise no one: Marmalade is now toasty and treasured in her own adoptive home. Blessed are the gentle, for they shall jam.

More Blog Posts