Have you ever seen someone turn beautiful before your very eyes?
It may be your Grandpop or your postal carrier. It could be your best friend, your boss, or the barista who calls you “queen” and draws a foam daisy in your latte.
When your eyes are open, it will happen over and over.
And the happiest happenings will involve cats.
Atari enchanted us the moment she arrived. She was dignity in black and white, a porcelain keepsake too precious to keep on a shelf. Her dark eyes danced with stories, and her patches were as deep as the velvet you save for a night at the opera.
But in the early hours of friendship, Atari could only be so beautiful.
We had not yet seen her thanking the sun, tilting her chin up like a prayer.
We could not have guessed that the beauty of age eighteen had nothing on age nineteen.
Now approaching twenty, Atari wears patience like a fragrance, perfuming the Community Room with an essence that knows no age.
She yields sunbeams to cats with questionable social skills. She indulges human kisses in great quantity, and human singing of dubious quality.
By certain standards, Atari might be considered less attractive. Arthritis puts a hitch in her step, and there are clouds in her eyes. When she promenades the room, she has to stop for breaks along the way, gathering fortitude for the next few feet.
But there is nothing standard about the beauty born from time.
Life may put lines on a face, or a limp in a hip, but life together reveals things as they are.
And the longer we know Atari, the longer we want to gaze upon her.
Her face is not only precious because she is a cat blessed with above-average adorableness. Her face is precious because we know her cheekbones and her flashes of comedy: the arched eyebrow when Aries makes alien noises, or the smile when our fingers hit just the spot behind her ear.
Her face is precious because it has faced us when we were overwhelmed or uncombed, but she chose to keep looking as though we were worth looking at.
Her face is precious, because we have faced life together, and it will be even more precious tomorrow.
The mystery repeats throughout Tabby’s Place.
Willie‘s leonine majesty stole our hearts from the beginning. Yet as we share quiet afternoons, the handsomest cat becomes even more adorable.
A brain injury left Willie bewildered, unwilling to entrust himself even to a bed. Watching his worries melt into warmth has been a time-lapse film of a buried bulb bursting into a daffodil.
The noble cat has become more irresistible than a kitten, simply by aging alongside us. His courage and his cuteness share the same growth spurts.
Across Quinn’s Corner, Batty‘s face is familiar, yet somehow new. How did we not see, at our first “how-do-you-do,” that the lithe black cat was equal parts feline and jewel?
Yet here she is, all faceted and glistening, coal turned into a diamond by time and togetherness.
Does the world have any idea how many colors one black cat can contain?
Does the world have any idea how much we could all love each other’s faces, if we just gave it time?
The longer Batty is our cat, the more she becomes the most beautiful cat who ever lived. The second most beautiful cat who ever lived was Batty yesterday.
I wish we could spill this glittery secret to everyone who adopts a kitten from Tabby’s Place.
They think they love their little one now, and of course they do. Yet they can’t imagine that the somersaulting cupcake who sleeps on their pillow tonight will grow more, not less, darling with time.
He will not always fit in a teacup. He will grow into his satellite-dish ears. He will lose that layer of dandelion down on his belly. You will need both hands to pick him up.
If you are fortunate, he will grow old enough to get a little crusty.
And fifteen years from now, when he snores in your lap like a loaf of sourdough, you will find him more adorable than you do today.
This is good news for all of us who live inside time.
This is the best possible news for all of us who love each other.