May I get rambunctiously real with you
, kittens?
I do not mean the way Hips gets with Prescott, although there is value in hippopotamussing your friends. (If you know Hips, you know that “hippopotamus” is a verb.)
I do not mean the way Valerie gets with her stuffed shrimp and lobster, although there is merit in amassing a plush mollusk harem.
I mean the way Hashbrown gets with time, space, and other acquaintances.
There is a real temptation, if you stumble around on two legs, to assume that you should know what to do at all times. There is an even greater danger, if you are a member of the species that invented Love Island and the Crunchwrap Supreme, to assume that you will know what to do at all times.
But then you run too fast, with a Crunchwrap in both hands, and all your assumptions hit the asphalt.
This is especially likely on the far side of something momentous. You’ve been here before: the holiday or the wedding or the Grand Opening finally happens, and it is miraculously magnificent, and all your work has paid off handsomely, and, and, and…
…and you feel empty-handed and as congealed as yesterday’s squeeze-cheese.
All your doings are done. Now what? Rest feels risky. What if you press “pause” and the button stays stuck? But neither can you keep “doing” at the speed of dynamite. You will run out of action items like Wile E. Coyote barrelling off the cliff, and then all the cats will giggle like first-graders at the substitute teacher.
This is the time to get raggedly real. This is the time to get, in the words of our valiant Founder & Executive director, “toasty.” This is the time to smash the assumptions and ask, “what would Hashbrown do?”
Hashbrown has absolutely no idea what he would do, and this is his glory. When Hashbrown has dispatched his ambitious to-do list (consume poultry products; spelunk all Suite E cubbies for orphaned meat nuggets; conduct experiment to determine the feasibility of a single unaccompanied shenanigan), Hashbrown does not feel lost.
When Hashbrown hits the mushy, under-cooked middle of the day, Hashbrown does not hassle himself.
When Hashbrown hasn’t a clue, Hashbrown has everything he needs. And his greatest need (although he will tell you it is a brick of mozzarella tall enough to require grappling hooks) is to marry the moment.
Don’t let our pewter potato’s slaphappy rap sheet convince you he is not a romantic. Hashbrown is Michael Buble when it comes to the moment. Livid or lolling, he is in love with the hour at hand, particularly because he has no master plan.
You and I love plans. We panic when someone grabs the pacifier of purpose from our mouths. We accept only answers. Hashbrown kisses the questions.
What shall I do, asks the cat named for a root vegetable raised to its highest purpose? Perhaps I shall inscribe infinity signs into the floor, etching eights between the ankles of that lucky human arrival.
Perhaps I shall see what happens if I set my inner oven on “broil” and try to fit all the other cats inside.
Perhaps I shall invoke my inner walrus, the potato of the sea, and loll mightily beside my friends. Perhaps they will still be my friends even though I attempted to fit them inside my oven five minutes ago.
Perhaps there is half a meat nugget under Juel. Lasers set to broil.
Perhaps I shall simply sit, silken and magnificent, without needing to know what this hour is asking.
He slows down. He stops. He exceeds previous records for speed. He kittens himself backwards to the kindness of children and saints. He riots against the existence of cats he loved twelve seconds ago.
He does not worry what any of this means. He means to marry the hour, and the next one, and the next.
Hashbrown may run, but never with the panic of a person who has misplaced their purpose (or a cat who has misplaced his poultry). He may work hard (to make friends, to eat friends, to bend the suggestions of gravity), but he never with worries about his worth.
He may be as inconsistent as ice cream for breakfast and fried potato pucks for dessert. He may dive into a coma and rise to razz every cat who ever questioned his pizzazz.
He will not let uncertainty disempower his hour. He has no idea what he’s doing, but he’s proud to be doing such a toasty job.
I hear he’s hiring anxious interns like you and me.