In December, we all wonder if we are making the “right” choices.

What will we give everyone? Where will we go on New Year’s Eve?

What is proper etiquette when Aunt Mafalda finds a cat hair in her mashed potatoes?

Meanwhile, Chester‘s holiday season hangs on one choice alone.

On the twinkling tree of cats, ferals prefer the back, facing the wall.

Let the cuddlers and kittens have the highest bough. Gaudy, gregarious Rori can shine for all to see. Taylor Ham can be the biggest, roundest ornament. Hips bears a remarkable resemblance to that dough snowman you made in kindergarten, the one your Mom still hangs front and center.

But feral cats do not choose to be chosen.

They do not trust the species who invented artificial trees.

They roll their eyes when we tell them they are gifts.

All they want for Christmas is to rejoice below the radar.

In most cases, we grant this wish. We return them to their colonies, in the care of earthy angels. They are still ours. Like mothers of tweens, we keep a respectful distance, hiding behind the holly berries when they are with their cool friends.

But if they stumble, they leave us no choice.

At first, it looked like Chester had made some bad decisions. Wounds tattooed his skin, as though he’d picked a fight with the abominable snowman.

We planned to treat his injuries and return him to his colony as soon as he was healed. This would be his first choice.

But suffering and love would not allow that.

We soon realized Chester was suffering more than he let on. These were not scratches, but the awful etchings of a rare disease. He was prisoner to a ravening itch, and scratching was the worst possible choice.

Each moment of relief cost him dearly, tearing open his papery skin. There was no holiday from this nightmare, no relief out under the pines.

He looked less like a cat, more like a walking wound.

He could not even look us in the eyes.

When you are entangled in agony, your lights flicker. You forget what you looked like before the scars. You believe the lie that you are now “ugly.” It feels like you have been hand-picked by pain.

You wonder where you went wrong, or how you could have played life differently.

You do not expect to hear your name.

But when you are a Tabby’s Place cat, you can’t opt out of being chosen.

Chester, growling and afraid, took the most important seat at our family table. His condition was grave. His only hope was intensive daily care, for weeks, or months, or more.

There would be trial and error, prescription diets that did nothing, and medications that made things worse before they got better. The scarred cat tried to scratch others. The “invisible” cat resisted being seen.

But it was too late. Chester was ours, and we were his.

Love’s choice is irrevocable.

Chester was still grieving too loudly to hear the bells. Still, they rang, in soft voices that soothed his skin, no matter how many times he hissed and slapped.

Comfort was small enough to slip between the bars of his rage. Joy hitchhiked on dinner bowls.

Love did not ask him to choose us, for it chose him.

Soft kitten skin began to cover his body again. Like summer snow, it glittered, all miraculous. Old wounds knit a new blanket of downy fur.

Chester peeked in our direction, throwing shy snowballs of connection. There were questions in his eyes, urgent as a child’s: did we see what he saw? Was this a true story?

And loudest of all, in those silent eyes, Why did you choose me? 

We make hundreds of decisions every day at Tabby’s Place, but they are all the same choice.

Maybe it comes naturally to love the hopeless because we have an incurable condition of our own.

We are incapable of seeing “ugly.” The word shatters on the floor like a cheap ornament. No lenses can correct our vision.

But it is more severe than that.

Not only do we see a gruff and scuffed face as beautiful, we have the outrageous idea that he is the most beautiful.

We choose him first. We choose him before he can return the favor.

We choose him, over and over and over, because love is durable and daily.

We choose Chester. But the funny thing, the Christmas thing, the Tabby’s Place thing, is this: we are the ones who got chosen.

In all the world, we are the people who got to welcome an angel incognito.

Chester came with nothing to offer but despair. But every moment we chose him, we received more gifts than we could carry.

We got to be heralds of healing.

We got to convince an old soul of his worth.

We got to unwrap a future that Chester scratched off his wish list long ago.

We get to do it again, and again, and again.

Choose love, and the holiday never ends.

If you so choose, you can be one of Chester’s very first sponsors. Just click here. Thank you, dear hearts.

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