Editor’s note: I cannot keep up with these cats. Seven seconds after I write about them, they get adopted. I regret nothing. – AT
Sarcasm may get the big laughs.
But the marinara goofus gets the big win.
Before you spray me with squeeze-tuna for calling a cat a goofus, know that Sparky requested this. I would even say he begged, except that I agreed before he finished the sentence.
It is an underappreciated fact that the goofus saves the world.
Sparky appreciates this more than most, having cruised the salty seas of “cool.” Not long ago, he was James Dean and Heathcliff, Ponyboy and Holden Caulfield.
Sparky was once the stray cat bouncing the world like a yo-yo on the end of his tail. He was unneutered and unsupervised, unaccountable to anyone but his own ego. He lived the delinquent’s dream, a wide world of wanderlust.
Then he woke up, wonderstruck.
Outdoor life had a certain spice. Swagger and bravado are the cheap tickets to “cool.”
But Sparky is brave enough to be sweet.
He has a gallon of “earnest” where his “edgy” ought to be. He tells jokes about olive loaf, not Olive, because he doesn’t believe in making fun of anyone. In his first presidential debate, he will tell the nation that his number one hero is Mister Rogers.
He would be rapidly written out of a sitcom script, because he simply cannot bring the snark.
If you have watched five minutes of television, you know the snark of which I speak. Dialogue is rapid-fire and relentless. Characters who are supposed to be friends stab each other, ceaselessly. No weakness is too tender, no innocence too pure. Everyone is fair game for the gag. Snark is the coin of the realm.
Sparky’s pockets are empty. Sparky’s riches are infinite.
Sparky’s business card will tell you that he is a Certified Public Enthuasiast. He invented something called Frolic Team. He is passionate about foreheads and the sound they make when they bimp each other. He has never taken one giblet nugget for granted.
He knows he will never step in the same sunbeam twice. Sometimes he wakes up laughing because he just remembered the word “riboflavin.” He is astonished that cats, lint, and evenings exist.
If you visit Suite D with any amount of wonder (or lint) in your pockets, you and Sparky will become a formidable force.* In fact, it would be responsible to issue a Severe Vim Warning in advance. Your excitement, multiplied by Sparky’s exuberance, will spike the sum total of joy in the world.
Nothing can stop you, once you have ceased to care if you are cool.
Nothing can stop you, once Sparky has started to love you. (Be advised: if you are a person, plankton, or senator, Sparky has already started to love you.)
As you bonk his forehead and start singing Sparky your favorite songs, you and the marinara goofus will become energy independent. You will tie the sullen spaghetti of snark in bow-ties and nudge the planet a little closer to “adorable.”
You will not judge anyone, because that would waste time better spent on inventing imaginary friends or writing limericks about sea monkeys.
Sparky will love the sauce back into this dry and weary land, even if he has to frolic himself silly.
A former stray cat, infected with FIV and infatuated in all directions, just may save your world.
Like all heroes, he begins locally. He defends the right to delight. If you find the courage to announce your love for Funyuns, or Point Break, or suspenders, and someone rolls their eyes, Sparky will shout, “I love it, too!”
Next thing you know, Mr. Mustache will chime in. “Funyuns are aptly named.” Lina, whose eye-roll is internationally admired, will run out of snark. “Patrick Swayze is kind of underrated.” Chicken Nugget will chuckle. “You folks are all heckin’ cool.”
Snark defused. Spark at large. Watch out, world.
*Or rather, you would, but now he has been adopted, so the Frolic Team practices off campus.