The world tells us they are less valuable.
We set their price above rubies.
They are striped cats as red as Beaujolais, or eyeless seers with sight beyond sight. They are trusting and angry, magnetic warmth and metallic ego. They are prone to breakage and leakage.
They are nearly four thousand strong, a small country of heroes we have loved over twenty years of Tabby’s Place.
Still, each one comes as a revelation, Earth’s first cat all over again. This business of loving does not get old. We are as slack-jawed at #3,998 as we were for #17. If this makes us simpletons, you can etch that title on my business card.
But how else should we respond when light splits the dark all over again? Dare we withhold astonishment? Would it not be an intergalactic injustice not to jump up and down when the sky goes bright with a Firestar?
For a cat known for a terrible fall, our celestial cheese cracker is an expert in rising. Across the sea, Firestar’s tiny photo came with the barest description. He fell from a balcony. He suffered a broken jaw. He suffered. He suffered. He suffered.
Then he launched from Lebanon into our atmosphere, broke open his jar, and released all the lightning bugs.
An oversized child with jokes where his caution should be, Firestar seems immune to injustice. While less-afflicted cats consider themselves the sword of the dispossessed (behold Melee, who shall give her last breath to the cause of Spray Cheese for All), Firestar forgives his own story.
A cat’s mouth is a masterpiece of satire and silk, a wry little wire that says more than our words. But Firestar’s fall left him with a toothy grin he can’t turn off. He can’t help smiling in more ways than one. His feelings are strong, and his feelings are concentrated, carbonated joy.
As a little girl, I had strong feelings of my own when it came to mouths. While I had no use for human baby dolls, I was a glutton for stuffed animals. But something in my little heart broke every time I saw a plush bear or echidna or (most commonly) cat with a sad little frown face. Have you ever noticed how many stuffed animals are frowning, inverted-V’s of discontent?
I made it my quest to find smiling creatures. I am still on mission. Firestar is the brightest sun in my sky.
But like most true smiles, our red giant’s grin comes at a price. Firestar’s injuries left him with chronic sinus issues and a fistula. The gravitational field is all gooey inside, and antibiotics orbit his hours. The sky’s kindest cat tries to make things easy for us, literally licking his pill from a pile of poultry, but there’s no escaping the presence of trauma. Even a neurologist gaped at Firestar’s CT scan, which looks more like a blurry Webb Telescope image than a normal cat skull.
No matter. The star fell, and the star rose, and the Firestar smiles with full knowledge. He has limped through the long night without gnashing his teeth. He has chosen to be awed by default, blind to the border between miracle and ordinary. There are people here, you know, tall orangutans who hug and giggle. Have you ever heard a human being giggle? Firestar wants to send that sound across the universe so all the aliens can enjoy it.
That would be enough, but can you imagine that mercy also saw fit to create cats? Cats. Cats! Firestar is surrounded by cats, interstellar introverts and astronomical egos and perplexing parallaxes who eclipse all expectations. Cats! Firestar bursts into flame for cats, warmth and light and waxing gratitude. He does not care if Hashbrown knocks him off the astral plane. He wants to live on the dwarf planet named Mullet. McGregor gets his spectrometer spinning. Sunflower is the absolute magnitude of love.
And we have not even begun to discuss the constellations of chicken that arrive like a visitation at 4pm every day. Every day. Every. Day.
Blankets with Captain America. Purple Crocs full of feet that rush to deliver hugs. Ramps that lead outside and inside and back again. The very fact that there is an outside, and the truest truth that Firestar is never outside adoration.
This life is so beautiful, such an impossible aurora of gifts, that Firestar is aflame with smile.
He remembers the pain, and he rejoices all the brighter.
He knows he is fragile, and he trusts that love is strong.
His jaw is broken and his face is crooked, but his world contorts into kindness for a perfectly aligned kiss.
Firestar is a revelation, the first light of love’s revolution. Here’s to our blazing boy, and the next four thousand beloveds.