I know you’re busy.
There are bills to pay, towels to fold, and rehearsal for your all-bassoon band The Awful Falafels.
But if you must skip one thing on your agenda, please don’t let it be Skip-It.
Skip-It appears bewildered, when she appears at all. She scores in the 99th percentile of Most Astonished Beings. She does not lament her bafflement, but neither does she know how to step out of it. This is why you will not see her step out very often.
But be assured: Skip-It misses nothing. She came from a vast and ailing cat colony, over sixty strong. Their hearts were valiant even as their bodies buckled, five dozen tigers in dandelion bodies.
Skip-It has not forgotten those days.
Her kin roared back to health, crushing upper respiratory infections and even FIP underfoot. But Skip-It was older than she appeared, and sicker than she let on. The littlest pewter panther had kidney disease.
Being a cat, Skip-It is capable of many things. She can detect the presence of kindness in 0.001 parts per million. She can move, mambo, and complete one full Macarena without making a sound. She can tell when we are trying our best.
But, being a cat, she is not capable of dishonesty.
Skip-It finally had to admit she was sick.
When it comes to kidney disease, a cat tells the truth in the language of liquids. Early signs include “PU” and “PD:” polyuria and polydipsia, or “plenty o’ urine” and “plenty o’ drinking,” if you are a sophisticated scientist like me.
We are proud to be plenty o’ neurotic at Tabby’s Place, so we caught Skip-It’s secret from her first whisper. Further testing confirmed that her condition was severe.
There were two things to do. Make it three.
We would treat Skip-It to an alchemy of medical care and mercy. Subcutaneous fluids could buy her time, but we would always respect her dignity. We are not here to inflict fear in the name of healing.
We would move Skip-It to a small suite, the better to honor her boundaries and ensure we miss nothing. Here, in the safest place on Earth, our polyglot staff can revere her in the languages of food, fleece, and (if she chooses to become fluent) high-quality hugs. Our volunteers can replace warmish blankets with fresh-from-the-dryer blankets and meaty treats with supplemental meaty treats. Skip-It will never sleep on a tepid surface or grieve an empty bowl.
We would also attempt to explain Skip-It’s name.
When you are rescuing one hundred thirty eight cats from two colonies, naming gets a little nutty. If you are to have hope of even remembering your own name when it’s all over (and it is never over), it’s a good idea to name cats in themes. That is how we got the elements (Hydrogen, Gallium et al), the deli darlings (Salami, Hummus, and so forth), and the retro toys.
Skip-It came with Rubiks, Popples, and Tetris. Skip-It looked at us with concern when we described her namesake, a kind of rubberized slingshot that you wear around one ankle while jumping as fast as you can. It is essentially a self-inflicted tetherball game that is an excellent way to acquire a bruise the size of a wombat.
Skip-It did not think this sounded like a very good idea, although it did give her new respect for children of the 1980s.
But the toy was never the point. Just as Rubiks was not a puzzle to be solved and Tetris is more than so many pieces, Popples is no stuffed animal.
And then there is Skip-It.
Skip-It came to Tabby’s Place, where no cat ever has to jump as fast as she can, ever again.
There is time to be bewildered. Unconditional love is unfathomable. It is more uncommon than people who know how to properly fold a fitted sheet. (I have never seen these people in the wild, but I have read about them in textbooks.)
It is a fearsome thing to fall into the hands of people who will never let you go, even if they can never touch you.
Skip-It has all the time she needs. We will keep her company. We sit quietly by her side. We trust that our love is speaking, though our words be few. Skip-It misses nothing. Skip-It knows that, for once in her life, she has not been skipped.
Skip-It’s kidneys keep their own secrets. We can’t know how much time we will have together. Cats as frail as wafers have lived many years with bad “numbers,” while cats brawny as bison have passed within weeks.
Ours is not to hoard the days, only to hallow them.
We will not skip a single one.