Do you ever lay awake, wondering if you’re doing your part to promote world peace?

Will history show that you took a stand for sympathy, empathy, and shrimp scampi?

No?

No problem. Uni is personally handling the situation.

Uni may appear an unlikely candidate to heal the world. Peacemakers are known for self-control, but Uni’s bowels are bossy. Diplomats demonstrate poise, but Uni can’t even talk herself out of invading no-cats’-land, the back hallway.

No one has ever shown up to the United Nations General Assembly stark naked, but Uni runs free. Especially down the back hallway.

In other words, Uni is exactly the one to mend the world.

For starters, she is a scholar. You can’t expect to make history if you don’t study it. Uni has lived at Tabby’s Place since she was small enough to hide in your Teenage Mutant Ninja Kittens lunch box. She has learned from the greats.

Our vet team taught her that what is born broken can be mended, whether it is a rectal stricture or a sense of shame. Pepita taught her that gentleness is the way of queens. Hazey taught her that a rival is just a sister waiting to help you run down the hallway.

Our volunteers taught her that you can never run far enough to escape the circle of love.

And her favorite historical figure, Benjamin Franklin, taught her that you can be a favorite historical figure and “fart proudly.”

“Proudly” being Uni’s favorite adverb, this was a high point in her education. Uni may always be flatulent, but now she knows this is a compliment. Embarrassment is a waste of time when the wide, weird world is in front of you and the wind is at your back.

It may take a special adopter to embrace a cat with gastrointestinal giggle fits. Very well. It should take a special adopter to embrace any cat, period. Uni just feels fortunate that her facts are on the table.

This is the part of the blog where Uni scrunches her pointy, perfect face into the crook of my neck to proofread: That’s “facts,” not “needs.” Certainly not “flaws.” You wrote “facts,” right? On second thought, forget “facts.” Write “flair.” My flair is on the table.

And this is why Uni is candidate numero uno to save us all.

In one sense, Uni has been at Tabby’s Place longer than “adds up.” She is the most adorable individual ever known to art or science. She is live-action animation, with ten Oscars for Best Performance by a Miracle.

She laughs every time she breathes, and she breathes life into that tired species of turnip better known as humans.

She deserved a home when she was a kitten. She deserved a home when she was a twirly tween. She deserves a home now that she is a young adult. She also deserves a lifetime supply of yodeling emus, because poultry who sing taste better. (Yes, Uni is still proofreading this.)

But we are counting the wrong numbers, and Uni is the master mathematician.

Uni has been at Tabby’s Place for exactly the proper duration. There is no timetable for finding the people who will love your “flair.” There is only the loud, crowded kids’ table, where everyone has oddities, and no one is ashamed.

There is no “too long” or “too late” here. There is only a circle so wide, you can’t step outside, no matter where you run.

Sadly, most of us turnips do run.

We run until we are breathless. We run so no one will see our “flair.”

We end up right back at the center, with a tuxedo cat who toots.

Uni may be the one without pants, but the path to peace only admits the naked.

OK. So Uni has chronic gastrointestinal issues. Hazey has a jalapeno temper. I have a broken pancreas, glow-in-the-dark anxiety, and the upper body strength of a gerbil.

You have flair, too. All the chancellors, celebrities, and colonels have flair. (Colonel Peabody wears his on the outside, in the most eminent pair of Underoos known to history).

So, if you’re looking for a roadmap to peace, you may want to follow four white feet into the back hallway.

I hear that’s where the naked and unafraid are gathering.

Maybe Uni can even convince the United Nations to join us.

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