You will have everything you need to thrive, medically and metaphysically.
You will never go a day without meat products of some nature.
You will not end up alone.
These are among the many promises Tabby’s Place makes our residents. But it’s that last one that tells the one story worth telling.
(Gator has registered a formal objection to the preceding statement, contending that any promise involving meat products is the premier promise. This applies to meat entities several steps away from “nature.” Poultry resembling GoGurt has its place on the tree of life. Duly noted, hot stuff.)
It’s that last one that shrinks the world to the one cat whose face is cradled in our hands at this precise moment. It’s that last one that expands the universe to the one cat asking everything of this moment.
It’s that last one that turns the last into the first. Millie should know.
When we last saw her, Millie knew blissfully little. Small enough to fit into a pencil case, her dreams yet unwritten, kitten Millie was an elegant grey pen with a full cartridge of poetry.
The year was 2010. We were all explaining that there’s slightly more to New Jersey than Jersey Shore. We were all playing Angry Birds. We all seemed less angry with each other. Lady Gaga wore a meat dress and did not donate it to Tabby’s Place, which made 100/100 cats angry.
Millie knew nothing of anger. All her memories were graced and Tabby’s Placed. All her storybooks had ended with kittens and teddy bears and bluebirds and galumphing humans holding hands and dancing in the forest.
All evidence pointed to a world where love has good strong hands, and no one ends up alone.
Sure enough, Millie won. She was chosen, claimed, exempted from “alone.” It was the normal order of things: kittens get adopted, and everyone joins hands and does the dance of joy.
But if the world were placid, there would be no poetry.
Lives are very poor at remaining obediently “normal,” and disorder slips into the dance unnoticed. Somewhere in those thirteen years, things went terribly wrong.
While humans were fighting like ferals, consuming non-food items like Tide Pods and Flamin’ Hot Takis, consuming our fleeting sacred days with war and disunity and TikTok, Millie was losing her grip.
Her pretty white paws were not strong enough to hold onto her home. Her poet soul could not write faster than time’s eraser.
Her innocent heart could not convince her family to keep her.
She fell like a star into a promise kept: “once a Tabby’s Place cat, always a Tabby’s Place cat.”
We don’t ask questions when cats come back, and we don’t judge. (Gator is giving me that look again, demanding honesty as only a cat can do. Alright. We strive earnestly not to judge. We remember that we, too, are vulnerable soft humans, capable of desperate decisions. We try. We judge. We try again.)
We simply remember that falling stars are shooting stars, and we are the lucky ones who get to make wishes and promises for each one.
Promises piled like purple prose in Millie’s rumpled notebook. We would tend to her aging body and its medical needs, no limits, no hesitation.
We would exhale patience and inhale her Millie magic, marveling at the grey gift in our arms.
We would reassure her and rejoice in her and reintroduce her to a land that tells the truth and the power and the one story worth telling.
She would not end up alone.
She may not be adopted again. At thirteen, with the red X of “Returned” on her record, Millie is not a ripe kitten. Trust returns in spasms. She has acquired awkward needs. Her beauty is marbled by age.
Caring for Millie is more complicated than it was in 2010.
Caring is always complicated. We scramble the whole story when we forget.
And we do forget, don’t we? We consider the kittens and declare them “highly adoptable.” We consider our own expectations and consider them “normal.” We consider our futures and consider ourselves fortunate until the ink runs dry and the stars fall in flame and we wonder, “will I end up alone?”
We won’t. Not you, not me, not Millie.
We won’t, because we are not powerless over the poem. Stark stanzas will jut in like elbows, and we will have to improvise. Years will try to divide us, and fear will try to erase all our faith. Penciled-in forevers will fade.
Promises will prevail.
As long as there’s breath in our bodies, we can keep on keeping promises. We have not yet met all the cats and people and teddy bears and bluebirds we could love. We have not yet seen the full strength of our own love.
We will always have the option to embrace.
Our grip is limited, but grace is unfathomable.
Millie’s name is written into the annals of love. She can’t lose her place, any more than she could earn it in the first place. She is loved, safe, promised a roof and a family simply because she is Millie.
Magnificent, magical, radiant, resplendent, clever, creative, courageous, poetic Millie.
It’s our job to make sure she knows she’s not alone: not now, not ever, not possible.
While we’re at it, let’s keep reminding each other.
Postscript: Life changes quickly for kittens of all sizes. In the days since I wrote this post, Millie has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. She is spending her final season, which we pray will be longer than anyone expects, in hospice with the extraordinary Jae. I am, as ever, in awe to behold such selfless love in action. XO, AT