That was a real nice draft, Thomas Jefferson.
Your work shows promise, dear Mr. Hamilton.
But when it comes to Declarations and Constitutions, Rori can take it from here.
When in the course of feline events, it becomes necessary for one cat to dissolve the word “hopeless,” you had best hope she is a tortoiseshell.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that cats of psychedelic colors are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of liverwurst.
Also happiness. Tail not required.
On casual examination, Rori might not appear the leading candidate for liberator. She suffered a traumatic injury, leaving her with nerve damage. The tricolor flag of her tail was reduced to a nubbin (a precise scientific term, not to be confused with a “shnubbin,” as seen on Theodosia).
Rori cherishes the right to self-expression, but she cannot express her own bladder. She is shackled to the charge of “inappropriate elimination.” She aspires to world domination, generally considered incompatible with representative democracy.
Despite this, Rori is the full radiance of freedom.
Tell her that she is incontinent, and she will demonstrate that she is unsinkable. She is nimbler than those fun-lovin’ guys who tossed the tea in Boston Harbor. She shakes off the chains of “gravity” to scale file cabinets.
Tell her that she is paraparetic, and she will assert the right to remain ecstatic. If you need your bladder expressed, the secret nine-and-a-halfth amendment entitles you to ninety percent more kisses.
Remind her that her situation was recently hopeless, and she will remind you that the world can change overnight. She will then proceed to do her best impression of George Washington.
She will remind you that Washington did not look like the guy on the Quaker Oats box. He was six feet tall, with flaming red hair. Rori will remind you that she is six hundred feet tall, with flaming red, black, and white hair.
Rori will remind you that it is the inalienable right of every cat to be as tall as they want to be.
Rori will also remind you that the secret thirteen-and-a-thirdth amendment entitles every cat to something called a “frankfurter” on the fourth of July. Rori does not know what that is, so Rori will request your assistance with frankfurter acquisition.
But no hero in history has been content with her personal freedom. Rori will not sleep easily until every cat, of every species, can stand at their full height.
Rori will not rest until all her brothers and sisters know the crunch of freeze-dried salmon and the feel of soft fingers tickling their chins like a fiddle.
(Correction: Rori will not rest, period. Rori enjoys the right to impromptu parades. Rori elects to frolic for reasons she is not obligated to disclose. Some may say she holds the federal office of Goofball. I say she keeps one eye open for opportunities to change the world.)
Rori remembers from whence she came. She was the girl all out of chances. She was the cat without a country. She was convicted of the crime of being “imperfect,” and sentenced to a hopeless situation. She crossed a river wilder than the Delaware to freedom.
It’s revolutionary business, being Rori.
Revolution doesn’t always look star-spangled. In the Community Room, it looks like contentment. Rori purrs over the grunts of the skeptics. She mocks the monarchy of the judgmental.
She is the feline equivalent of the fireworks that look like chrysanthemums, saved for the end of the show, when everyone thought they were out of “oohs.”
She is her own loudest “ooh!”
And when she is most relaxed, she dribbles.
Yes, that means what you think it means. It is a right she yearns to extend to all.
For, as much as we appreciate freedom from taxation without representation, the heart of liberty is in the dribbling.
No law can free us to be who we are. Love alone has such power.
Revolutionary, rebellious, relentless love declares: you are safe enough to relax.
You are not tolerated, but treasured.
You are not only accepted, but adored.
Not in spite of who you are, but precisely because of who you are.
This is Tabby’s Place, where a cat with a blinkered bladder gets to be a queen.
This is Tabby’s Place, where nobody forgets that everybody dribbles.
When the votes are in, everyone wins.
Happy Independence Day, Rori.
Happy Independence Day, Tabby’s Place family.