When you are in a hopeless situation, every day is Ash Wednesday.
You don’t need a smudge on your forehead. You wear grief like a tattoo.
You don’t need someone to say, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” You remember all too well.
But when you are a Tabby’s Place cat, love remembers your name.
For our recent rescues from Lebanon, ashes were no metaphor. Living in war-ravaged Beirut, their stripes were streaked with rubble and flashbacks. Lucinda and Antar each lost a leg. Leia lost her eyes. Doury and Sienna* wobbled like those who have seen too much. We will never see what they saw. We could not handle it.
Humans are the ones who need rituals like Ash Wednesday. We forget that we are mortal. We can’t leap the canyon between who we are and who we want to be. We forget that we need rescue.
Then we rescue fourteen cats with dust clinging to their toes, and we all start making new memories.
Lucinda remembers the time before trauma. She was no larger than a hot cross bun, and twice as warm in your hand. Her cartoon-princess eyes expected beautiful sights.
She was innocent then, and she is innocent now, but the second innocence is stronger. On the far side of the dust and the wound, she knows what survives the blast. She flings her toys high, because the sky is open again. She cuddles, contemplates, and celebrates being alive, alive, alive. She struts like a tripod queen, because Ash Wednesday has given way to coronation day.
Papillon remembers her purpose. Long before the lesions split her skin, she landed on Earth to be a healer. Something in the soil made mayhem with her injuries, leading to a rare bacterial infection Tabby’s Place has never witnessed in twenty-two years.
Yet the cat named for a butterfly was not doomed to dust. She touched down in safety and stuck the landing. Now, she flies to the door to be first to remind you that love is alive, alive, alive. She washes her toys in the water bowl. She trains for the world record in speed-eating squeeze poultry. She trains us in miracles.
Antar* remembers to laugh. He is as red as Friday night pizza and as round as a road that will always lead home if you just keep walking. He can do almost anything on his three stout legs. He can comfort the brokenhearted. He can give the gloomy the giggles, with a no-refund policy. He can probably restore political unity and universal goodwill, and he will get to that after he gets his fill of hugs.
The only thing Antar cannot do is deflate. Long before he lost that leg or acquired feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), he took a deep breath. That sweet, stubborn spirit has stayed with him ever since. Now it is his turn to breathe hope all over us, his “rescuers.”
Izma remembers what hands and paws are for. Mostly. Sometimes she kneads happy “biscuits,” and sometimes she hurls atomic fireballs. She is fast forgetting that second recipe. She is, in the words of one of her biggest fans, “an absolute lovegirl.” She is remembering her true identity. It takes soft hands to sweep away thick dust. Izma assumed that asthma and abuse were her lot in life. Many little resurrections remind her she is still alive, alive, alive.
The triplets remember the power of shenanigans.
Agave, Pepper, and Caramel were born with ocular issues. They were also born with each other. It takes more than fear to break a glow-in-the-dark three-strand rainbow cord. Caramel pets us back even while getting blood drawn, with little molasses paws making promises she will keep. Pepper hoards all the feather toys, building some great bird who can sing her song. Agave unwraps the individually-packaged toothbrushes used for ringworm detection, simply because it is hilarious.
They were all expected to need surgery, but all six eyes remembered to heal. They will not let us forget that the word “silly” comes from the same root as the word “blessed.”
We hope Astro and Doury (pictured in top banner) will remember us well. The wiggly boys were the first to enamor adopters. We will not fault them if they forget Tabby’s Place, their way-station on the world tour from love to love. We will not forget how they reminded us to remain alive, alive, alive.
Taro remembers who she was before her reputation. We were told she had given up on people and cats, taking shelter in the igloo of her own white fur. We were warned she would be “difficult.”
Yet the cat we expected and the cat we met had no recollection of each other. Taro reminds us that we are not frozen to our anger. She leans into fingers like a purring piano. She is astonished by the existence of windows. She is unimpressed by squeeze treats, which means there are more for Papillon.
She has forgotten the option not to forgive.
Leia remembers the map of the world. We do not know how she lost her eyes. She does not feel the need to tell us. It is more pressing to show us around the room of her life.
Have we not seen? Do we not know? There is love on both sides of the Atlantic. There is life after dust. It is so beautiful, it is all so beautiful. If we let her have her way, Leia will remind us that, even smudged and ashen, we are alive, alive, alive.
*Both on hold to be adopted. Do wonders ever cease? No, no they do not.