With 130 geniuses on the premises, Tabby’s Place abounds in experts.
Astute in meteorology, Anka can detect the sound of a storm’s last raindrop and immediately alert the authorities that he can now be taken outside in his stroller.
Unparalleled in epicure, Sootie is our first line of defense against canned food deficient in gravy.
And, from her unassuming office in Suite H, Shelly offers tutoring in remedial math.
Your professor has no eyes, but she glimpses your arrival.
Her tortie head tilts as your picture comes into focus. She can tell you walk softly. You must not be wearing a backpack of expectations; your step is too light.
Shelly shimmies with pleasure. Good. You are her favorite kind of student.
Her fee? Oh, goodness, of course she’ll teach you free of charge. Every beautiful thing she’s ever seen has come without a price.
Well, if you insist, meats are appreciated, but you don’t have to … OK, make it prosciutto. Extra thin.
But back to the lesson at hand. Shelly has examined you. Have you seen her?
She circles you, as though containing you in her care. She wants you to understand all of her angles.
You must be a serious scholar to see how things go right. If you are rushed and cramming, you will only notice what seems acute.
Yes: she is an eyeless cat, smaller than a throw pillow. She lives in Quinn’s Corner, which some might call the most helpless corner of the sanctuary for “hopeless” cats. She is infected with feline leukemia virus (FeLV), the disease that slams doors shut. She lived two years outdoors without ever hearing her name.
Have you added all that up?
Good, now Shelly can begin.
She tightens her circle, until her circumference is your lap. It is just teacher and student now, two small beings in the expanse of each other.
Shelly purrs to the rhythm of honesty. You feel it as you stroke her swirls, a chocolate-peanut-butter spirograph of feline beauty. She is not the stuff of headlines, big numbers, or sweeping changes.
She is not a thousand cats. She is not a hundred cats. She is not even “Cat,” the grand concept of the species we save.
Shelly is one cat, only one, exactly one.
Shelly is the cat who caught the eye of a kind woman, the way one tiny nautilus tugs your attention on the beach. There are millions of cats, billions of seashells. But in the only moment that counts, there is one.
Shelly is the cat whose eyes could not be saved, but whose heart stayed open. She did not need a textbook answer, or a definition of love. She needed specialty surgery, one sanctuary with one space for an FeLV+ cat, and a particular foster family with the precise patience to comfort her.
Shelly is the cat who came to Tabby’s Place, not because we love cats, but because we love Anka, and Sootie, and Shelly.
Shelly is love’s prime number, because we carry the one.
And this is where the student becomes the teacher.
You may be a little larger than a throw pillow, but you still can’t wrap your arms around all the cats, much less the concept of Cat.
Instead, you get to hold one, the one assigned to you in this hour, the one who will go un-held if not for your arms.
There is no splashy jackpot for carrying the one, no giant check awarded for stroking the cheek of a cat with no eyes.
You will have nothing to “show” for your time kissing Shelly.
We win no prizes for saving one FeLV+ cat.
Cool calculation may pay off, but love is free of charge.
Yet here we are, the richest animals on the face of the Earth.
I told you Shelly was a genius.