Editor’s note: The images below may be disturbing. Be assured that Chester is doing wonderfully well and free from pain today.

It is possible to forget how it feels to be touched.

Hands go cold at the sight of your face.

Smiles turn to stone when you slink by.

It is lonely inside your skin, but it is the only place you have to live.

Alive. Technically, Chester met the biological criteria, but there are vital signs too deep to measure. Beneath his flesh and fur, he cowered in the shadow of a great sadness.

There was little fur to speak of, not that anyone was speaking to Chester. That would require eye contact, and all the old folktales warn against looking directly at a monster.

Perhaps he had once been a cat, but now he was a web of scars and scales. What had once been soft fur now pebbled and bled, making him look like a wandering rock formation. Wounds crisscrossed his crusty skin like highways.

Only those golden eyes suggested that Chester was somehow still alive.

Alive. It is still possible to find someone fully alive in this brokenhearted world. They dwell in humble places, untouched by fame and glamour. You will know them by their mercy.

Someone was fully alive in the suburb where Chester languished. Others turned away, but she drew near. Her eyes scattered the shadows.

She did not see a monster, but an innocent cat; not a stray, but a neighbor. Chester’s disease did not disfigure him past recognition. No one who is still alive can ever be ugly.

Alive. Chester’s rescuer knew the ravaged cat was on borrowed time. Though it was hard to fathom how he could still be breathing beneath that skin, she had heard of a place where miracles are still possible. If anyone would touch such a hopeless case, it had to be Tabby’s Place.

When she called, Chester touched us, sight unseen. The description sounded like a serious dermatological issue, perhaps ringworm. We could handle that. We could reclaim every inch that pain had stolen.

We could not have prepared for the sight of Chester.

He resembled a burn victim, bony from failed attempts at finding food and the pain of attempting to eat at all. This was not ringworm. This was not even mange. This was, we would discover, exfoliative dermatitis in its most advanced state.

Chester’s own immune system had set this fire.

We knew Chester could still be saved. With a tireless protocol of medications, baths for his most critical wounds, and food, food, food, the cat of stone could live.

Alive. There is no greater risk than to keep hope alive. When you allow yourself to be touched, a cat like Chester will cling to you with his hopeful, desperate eyes. You will never be the same.

Scar tissue is safer than a soft heart.

But it is too late to play it safe at Tabby’s Place. And so, it was not too late for Chester.

In the presence of great suffering, your hand flies to your heart. It is love’s reflex, grasping at the only thing strong enough to bear the pain. And once you remember your heart, you will find the hands of a healer attached to your own humble body.

Alive. All these hands were jumper cables. Chester’s disease required a level of devotion usually reserved for royals and beauties. Chester did not know that we had rejected the suggestion that perhaps we should just “let him go.” He certainly did not know that the parade of peculiar, furless chatterboxes came to cure him, one meal and medicationat a time.

All he knew was that he was suddenly the center of attention.

When he scratched his endless itching too hard and made himself bleed, everyone wept and tended his wounds. When he peeked in their eyes, they glowed, as though the sun itself had smiled. And when the food tray arrived, Chester power-surged with so much life, he became slaphappy.

It is possible to keep a sense of humor even in sorrow’s canyon, and Chester had tucked a few laughs in his knapsack.

Mealtime became a game, as he walloped the food tray like a pinata. One of his goals, of course, was to get those precious giblets into his cheeks as rapidly as possible. But when you are coming back to life, you have multiple hungers at once.

Awkwardly and honestly, Chester was reaching out. He was touching the first people soft enough to touch him.

And soon, our fingers felt not raw scars, but fur; not crusty scales, but downy new skin; not a fortress, but a cat.

A healing cat.

A cherished cat.

A cat who had been beautiful all along.

Alive. It is possible to remember your worth. A warm touch builds a new world.

And you, Chester, are love’s favorite place to live.

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