Halloween has its charms, but the cats are really amped about November.
This is not because they have 364 days until the next time we dress them up as pumpkins and aliens.
It’s because November 1st is All Saints Day, and cats are all saints, all the time.
Nobody finds this more hilarious than the cats. They did not sign up to be saints. But here they are, sainting it up without effort.
Since this apparently entitles them to a “feast day,” they are all about it.
The holy folks you’ve heard about — St. Francis, St. Teresa, St. Olav the Fat and so on — had to meet formal criteria before they were declared “Saints.”
But at Tabby’s Place, the requirement for sainthood is precisely one.
Hint: it has nothing to do with being “saintly.”
It has everything to do with being.
This is the dogma of the cat sanctuary: to be, is to be loved.
So, St. Chicken Nugget becomes the patron of patience.
He was wholly loved the day he crept into a drop trap outside a prison. He was wholly loved, with his FIV, and his diabetes, and his worried expression.
He was wholly loved when he cowered with other saints in stripes and spots. He was wholly loved when he made himself a little monastery in the Plexiglas ceiling tube to escape our touch.
He was wholly loved when he comforted other cats, even before he was comfortable himself.
He is wholly loved now that we can shnoogle him.
He is as holey as any saint, so love leaks out everywhere he goes. That is how saints mend the world, you know.
St. Gulliver may be the patron of compatibility.
He came to Tabby’s Place broken by a speeding car, with injuries deemed “incompatible with life.” But life tore that lament into confetti, and now St. Gulliver is compatible with everything.
Gulliver is compatible with cats who crowd his sunbeam, and cats who make fun of his tootsie-roll tail nubbin, and cats who are scared to make eye contact with cats or people or God.
Gulliver is compatible with volunteers who sing, and volunteers who are too tired to speak, and strangers who have forgotten how to be sparkly.
Gulliver is compatible with lively cats, and hospice cats, and cats disguised as teenagers and retirees. If you protest that you are the one creature too cretinous for Gulliver to love, Gulliver will interrupt to ask you to marry him.
St. Lornadoone is the proud patron of longsuffering.
That is a good old-timey word. Lornadoone likes it even more than “zounds” or “gadzooks.” Lornadoone likes random acts of aggression, random acts of affection, and her status as one of the most challenging cats in Tabby’s Place history.
Lornadoone likes the Behavior Team, since she is their employer. (Lornadoone looOOOooOOoves Carolyn, but that deserves a sweeping epic novel rather than a blog post.)
Lornadoone likes stroller rides, her private suite, and the psalter of special accommodations that keep her calm and slaphappy.
Most of all, Lornadoone loves everyone who has ever been described as “exhausting,” “too much,” or “insufferable.”
This is fortunate for all of us.
Lornadoone has proof that “insufferable” beings can get unconditional love, as long as they are cats. The best news is that we are all cats. That is what Lornadoone told me, and I am not about to contradict a real, live saint who bites hard.
St. Prescott may be the patron of life itself, from the parts to the whole.
The facts are black and white: she is incontinent. She needs her bladder expressed. She is less “adoptable” than the average saint.
But I tell you: our grey girl is a benediction of bliss and a doxology of delight.
Prescott is the breath of angels wrapped in stardust stripes.
Prescott runs through doors she is not “supposed to” enter, because she is greedy for more life, and also because she loves having a “Wanted” poster bearing her face.
Prescott can barely believe she gets to do it all again tomorrow.
She is also the patron of tomorrows, provolone, and the rumor that the more you love somebody else, the more you become yourself.
They are all loved, in their entirety.
Personally, I have a feeling that the holiest folk are platinum goofballs, and you can’t be a saint if you are not a little slaphappy.
I think the saints would dress cats up as pumpkins and let Hips curl up inside their cowls. I think they would name cats “Holy Moly” and “St. Olav the Fat.”
I think saints are love machines.
I think saints are only good at loving because they were loved first.
I think we have a lot to learn from the holy folk no one has heard about.
Now excuse me, because St. Willie is praying loudly for his second breakfast.
It is a feast day, you know.