It was just a funny little typo on our staff message board: “I recreated Graham.”
She didn’t.
She couldn’t.
Even if she could, she wouldn’t.
But it was the type of typo that reminds us what type of critters we are.
My colleague intended, of course, to write “I re-crated Graham.”
Freshly released into his new cat suite, Graham had attempted to chomp Panthera like an after-school snack.
There are consequences for such behavior. You are still our honey, Graham. This is no judgment on your goodness, handsomeness, or Grahamtacularity. It is just that we would prefer you not pummel Panthera into cookie crumbs.
So, when you choose the way of cayenne instead of cinnamon, you get a time-out.
You go back to the crate from which you came, so you can cool down and learn to love your neighbor permit cats to live.
Ergo, you get re-crated.
Not recreated.
But when your kindergarten teacher has a classroom of 140 cats, and her priority is ensuring that everyone is properly fed, medicated, and validated as (a) infallible, (b) adorable, and (c) see (a), typos happen.
“I recreated Graham.”
The jokes began at once. The humans are the real kindergartners around here. Cats may bite each other’s noses like gumdrops, and attempt to reenact their favorite scenes from Gladiator with cats who would rather be gladiolas, and get into duels over which of them looks more like George Clooney. But they are not so immature as to find typos hilarious.
We, on the other hand, snicker like doodles.
“You recreated him?”
“So there are now two Grahams?”
“Did you use a 3-D printer?”
Meanwhile, Graham Cracker “G.C. Also Stands For George Clooney” Rosenberg just groaned.
He may have been new to his suite, but he already knew what type of tapioca we’re serving at Tabby’s Place. This is the cat who arrived with a disease that few survive. This is the cat whose eyes were so sunken, we had to SCUBA dive for signs of life.
This is the cat who received celebrity treatment before he even had a name: intensive care at a world-class hospital, with a budget of “whatever it takes to save him.”
This is the cat who learned that his snuggles and his spitfire were honored with equal fanfare, since they are both ingredients of one perfect Graham.
This is the cat who knows what it means to be loved on your first draft.
Graham outlived panleukopenia, and Graham outran the myth that you can only be accepted if you are acceptable.
Why strive for “acceptable” when you are exquisite?
Why stop at “well behaved” when you are the silver splendor of the postmodern age, the man with the master plan who’s got the skills that pay the bills, the thunder that knows no blunder, and, most importantly, an “ordinary” cat with a melted marshmallow streak down his nose and a quest to be somebody’s honey Graham?
Why be “re-created” when you were created perfect the first time?
Fortunately for Graham, it was just a typo.
There are places in this world where people (never cats) will try to recreate you in their image.
There are places, from kindergarten to the Cracker Barrel, where folks won’t let you sit with them unless you recreate your “weird” and “spicy” into vanilla wafers and boiled potatoes.
But this is not that type of place.
This is Tabby’s Place.
And that is what made the typo so funny.
We know we are little kids around here. We don’t have the power to create cats, much less recreate them. Besides, we’d do a shoddy job if we tried. The tails would be too stiff, and the stripes would be too symmetrical, and we would never think of marshmallow nose-stripes, or eyeless Shelly who sees angels, or FIV+ FeLV+ diabetic Trifecta who heals cynics, or that eighth wonder of the world called Eartha.
Recreate them?
No, no, no.
Our calling is to rejoice in them.
To remind them they are more suave and debonair than a moon full of Clooneys.
To regale them with meats and mercies.
To save their lives, and let them slyly save ours.
Maybe to crate them in the event of paw-to-paw combat.
And to create a little world-within-a-world, where kindergartners and cats and curmudgeons know they are already lovable, just as they are.
It’s a Grahamtacular world, and you’re welcome to sit with us anytime.