Let Farmer Biff dominate the County’s Largest Gourd contest.
Let Gramma Aldene boast the prize pumpkin.
Tabby’s Place claims true victory: fullest Flower.
She is a colossal chrysanthemum, a gigantic gladiola. She is New Jersey’s largest lilac, our astronomical aster, a sunflower supernova. She is not half as tired of my wordplay as you are.
You will note I have not invited the letters F, A, and T to this garden party. Obesity is a lightweight topic for a cat of true size.
Why speak of the scale when we can sing of her spots, black-and-white beauty marks bloated with dignity? Why pronounce her “overweight” when we can pluck her petals and realize they only declare, “she loves me, she loves me, she loves me more than liverwurst”?
Why plod around prose about plumpness when our hearts are hungry to expand?
And that, my dear butterbeans, is precisely what they shall do in the garden of Flower. Take this bouquet in your hands (use both, and possibly also one of those rubber belts like Home Depot guys wear when lifting refrigerators). You will find, to your buttery delight, that you have just taken the laughing galaxy into your very own embrace.
Flower laughs with you, eyes sparkling like wine. Flower laughs like she told earth’s first joke, and everything since has been a mere footnote. Flower laughs like the girl with the key to the secret garden. Flower laughs because she intends to open the gate to all the imps and scamps and goofy gardeners on two legs.
Flower stops laughing when Jerome leans in to sniff her bewitching fragrance. Flower pours potting soil on Jerome’s head. Flower resumes laughing.
Like a long line of daffodils and dandelions before her, Flower came to Tabby’s Place from a shelter. The growing season had turned grim. Exotic orchids and sensational felines may require delicate care. In Flower’s case, this translates to a prescription diet for a persnickety bladder. That’s enough to make the average galoot run for the potting shed.
But Flower neither runs (so as to spare New Jersey any unnecessary seismic activity) nor faults those who do. Flower neither fears the future nor chews over the past. There is entirely too much to consume in the day called “today.”
“Today” is Flower’s favorite food. Yours is her favorite lap, especially if you read her favorite storybook, “Five Cups of Butter for Buttercup the Cat.”
“Today” uses words like “hopeless” for compost.
Just as Farmer Biff doesn’t call his prize pumpkin a curcurbita pepo, no one at Tabby’s Place is calling Flower “hopeless,” much less “fat.” She is light on her feet, harvesting love from golden hours. Her needs may be broad as leaves, but all the lights are green at Tabby’s Place. A cat simply can’t need “big” enough to merit guilt.
If you plant Flower in front of you and tell her all that’s involved in keeping her happy and healthy, she will laugh. She will laugh, not at you, but with you. You, butterbean, are no less “hopeless” than an elephantine cat with an expensive diet. Come, now, let us stretch the limits together. Let us need boldly in full sun. Let us all feed each other until we are full and wide. Let us grow strong enough that our petals are unanimous: they love me, they love me, they love me.
It’s all right here in black-and-white.