When your life is as juicy as Mandarin‘s, each day pours out questions.
Will Rihanna wrap around you like a clementine peel?
Will soft hands cup your chin like a lemon drop?
Will you get your recommended daily dose of Vitamin See Me?
Mandarin takes nothing for granted.
With eyes as big as grapefruits, he has seen life’s pith and pulp. When he lived outdoors, there was no time for zest. An atrocious ear infection puckered him with agony, barreling into his brain.
By the time we met Mandarin, sickness had squeezed his odds of survival to the last drop.
But there is no pain so pungent that love is not stronger still, and no woe so deep that hope runs dry.
Wise eyes saw “worth” where others saw “just a stray.” Good hands enfolded Mandarin like an heirloom orange — you know, the kind you find in gift boxes, individually wrapped in little straw jackets like gentlemen.
Thanks to intensive care and a faithful foster home, Mandarin lived.
The only souvenirs from his sickness were a jaunty head tilt … and a carafe of questions.
Foremost among them: Can you see me?
It sounds silly, at first. Of course we see Mandarin. He is the citrusy center of Suite I. He is the gem of the grove, from his radiant red rind to his heroic heart.
He is Rihanna‘s main marmalade, turning to jelly in her arms. (Sometimes we need to double check to make sure he has not turned to actual jelly, given how much Rihanna relishes squeezing him with her sizable self.)
He pretends to be a sour patch kid, but patience peels off Mandarin’s pretenses.
Underneath, he is as soft as meringue pie, going from tart to tender at the right touch.
From sun up to sundown, and all the hours between, Mandarin is beloved and beheld.
So … why is he still asking to be seen?
He asks with his eyes, those colossal cartoon orbs that don’t quite look real. Mandarin’s expressions seem marinated in angst, slightly glazed with desperation.
If he widened his gaze any further, his eyebrows would bump the ceiling, or Rihanna’s belly, whichever came first.
It is as though he can’t quite believe what he sees, but he is trying.
There is just so much love sloshing around, it is almost too beautiful to trust.
(And if you do not think “sloshing” and “beautiful” belong in the same sentence, you have not spent much time around Tabby’s Place.)
He asks with his paws, sometimes slapping the hands that pet him. As best we can tell, this means “pet me more,” not, “you are as vile as a sip of orange juice after mint toothpaste.”
But after the slap comes the stare again, that anxious, earnest grapefruit gaze. Did I go too far? Did I push you away? Am I a bad apple?
Do you still see me?
We might get exasperated, if we didn’t ask the same questions ourselves.
But there is a river running under Tabby’s Place, and it flows with steadfast love. It is the juice of patience and promises. It is strong enough for the snuggle bugs, the snapdragons, you, and me.
When we drink from this river, we love cats just as they are, citric and cuddly and complicated. We love what we see. We can’t look away.
We are infatuated with the fat and the spindly, the acrobats and the “advanced needs” cats. The closer we look, the more there is to love.
The longer Mandarin sees us seeing him, the less he has to fear.
Except perhaps being turned into orange preserves by Rihanna.