“Oh, sweetheart, you go first.”
“Tell me what you need. Tell me who made you cry. Tell me everything.”
“Me? Don’t you worry about me. I’m not hungry.”
Pancake said it with a smile, because she meant it from her heart.
Although she appears to be furnished with the usual ears, whiskers, and other accoutrements of a “normal” cat, Pancake is, in fact, all heart.
She is heart, from her buttercream coat to her bubblegum nose. Heart gave her a grin that doesn’t quit, and heart doodled every ring on her tabby tail. Pancake is all heart.
Pancake is also “all in,” which is an occupational hazard of being love in feline form. Many cats are selfless mothers. But few have risen to the heights of Pancake.
There was nothing flat about Pancake when she came to Tabby’s Place. Looking more like a sausage than a flapjack, she was, to use the scientific term, “super-duper pregnant.”
But Pancake had no complaints. We could not even find one on X-ray: just six healthy kittens, and one mellow mama who couldn’t wait to break the fast and get to kiss them.
But in the meantime, there were other kittens to kiss. When you are all heart, the whole world appears to fall under the species of “kitten.”
Pancake’s eyes shone like silver dollars. Everywhere she looked, kittens! Her foster mother was a kitten. The Tabby’s Place staff who poked and prodded her was a clowder of kittens. She heard cars roaring down Route 202 and yearned to dote on the drivers, surely all kittens.
Pancake relished the opportunity to adore in all directions, as though she was daily bread for the whole wide world — with real maple syrup, and blueberries arranged in the shape of a smiley face, unless of course you wanted cereal, or a Croissan’wich, or a promise that everything is going to be okay, in which case Pancake would go out and get that for you, because Pancake would do anything for you, anything, even more than Meat Loaf, speaking of which, she could also get you one of those.
She didn’t even look tired.
She did look unique, and this is further evidence that Pancake is “heart” all the way to the molecular level.
Although our vet team could find no explanation, Pancake’s left pupil was smaller than a poppy seed. But this only meant her eye was filled with light, sunny-side up. She was here to love, and she loved every minute of it.
And then, the kittens came.
All kittens are cute. This is more basic than gravity, Earth’s magnetic field, or the fact that waffles are actually spreadsheets used by gerbil accountants. But with apology to other kittens, no kittens have out-cuted the kittens of the cat who is all heart.
There is a scientific explanation for this. Having been exposed to unprecedented levels of love for their entire gestation, it was inevitable that the kittens should acquire historic quantities of “adorable.”
It was there in the recipe: all love + all in = all the forces of good, concentrated in six mewing mini-muffins.
As the kittens grew, Pancake was a whirl of confectioner’s sugar, pouring herself into each one. Syrup, Waffle, Crepe, Maple, Flap, and Jacks grew as strong as Captain Crunch and as sweet as a Croque Madame (the French breakfast sandwich that translates into “Mrs. Crunchy,” which Pancake told her kittens, and they laughed so hard you could hear them all the way to Paris, which made Pancake happy, because she wants to take care of the kittens over there, too).
At last, surprising no one, Pancake’s honey buns were all adopted. The “Breakfast Club” dispersed. The feast was over.
Pancake had given her all.
But as everyone in New Jersey knows, a real diner is open 24/7.
After breakfast comes brunch.
And now that she has given and given and given, it is Pancake’s turn to be the kitten.
This is going to take some practice. Ask her what she would like, and Pancake turns the question around. She would rather knead biscuits into your belly than have a moment to herself. She insists you have seconds of her sweetness. All that she has is yours.
“Don’t worry about me! I will just have some porridge later. Isn’t that a funny word, ‘porridge?'”
She will make you laugh, and she will fill you up, and she will remember your birthday, and how you take your tea, and the way your eyes lit up when she gave her all.
But somewhere, behind that sunny eye, Pancake remembers when she was just a dollop of dough herself.
Kittenhood must have been a breakfast on the run. There are no extra helpings for a feral-born cat, just grit and growing up fast. You can either turn as hard as a Grape-Nut or decide to do for others what no one could do for you.
Pancake chose the path of heart.
Now it’s her time to be chosen, cherished, a kitten.
Be love’s guest, Pancake. The feast has just begun.
And indeed, Pancake is the forever kitten of her forever family. As you can see, she even has a new sibling … although we have a feeling she’s doting on him like her newest kitten, too.