You may be full of yule log today.
You may be full of ill-advised eggless nog.
Your living room may be full of Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles.
Be assured: you are not as full as a cat.
Whatever you may contain today, it can’t compete with the feline fullness that is a tribute to the species.
Cats — every cat who hath ever trod the earth, from the meek to the geeky to the self-righteously shrieky-freaky (yes, I speak of Olive) — are full of themselves.
This is understating the case considerably.
Cats are so full of themselves, they slosh over into each other like champagne glasses. They are tipsy with pride, belching bravado in all directions. (Yes, I speak of Oram.)
If their egos wore pants, they would bust their buttons hourly. If cats baked, their ovens would explode (and they would also outlaw all meatless loaves). If cats filled your stocking, it would split at the seams, real live Ninja Turtles hurtling everywhere.
Perhaps no cat in the history of smugness has been so full of herself as Lola.
This does not make our sort of sense, of course. Human logic, which is also responsible for the invention of pants and the attempt to cajole cauliflower into pasta, says that you should be proud of yourself, loud about yourself, full of yourself if and only if you win.
A history of aggression is not a gold medal. Biting Dr. C’s leg like a drumstick is not cause for a breathless proud call to Grandma and Grandpa. Sneering at the elderly (e.g. Angelo) is not an extracurricular that will get you into Princeton. A physique that is not so much apple or hourglass as “undulating potato” is not cover girl material.
Lola does not want to be a cover girl.
Lola can bake her own potato.
And Lola can be perfectly sweet on herself for precisely the reasons small-minded beings of any species might shelve her. Lola is full of herself, a brimming bowl of goldfish and gold medals.
(Lola is also convinced that Angelo can be turned into nog. It’s a hypothesis.)
You might think this all means Lola is an egomaniac. You might see Lola prance and hypothesize that she is self-satisfaction on four legs, conceited to the core, vain in every capillary. You would be absolutely correct.
And your life will improve dramatically as a result.
Funny thing about feline fullness, especially in its ultimate Lol-ling form: it bursts the walls without blocking the door.
Lola’s self-love crashes through her cathedral ceilings. Lola’s inner wonderment cracks the windows. Lola is so full of herself, she has room in there for you.
Not even the meatiest-minded scientist has a working hypothesis about the square footage of a feline soul. All we know is that it expands faster than the universe.
Which is outstanding news for you and me.
Somehow, it’s precisely because Lola is so full of herself that she can welcome you so warmly. The very castle that’s crammed with confidence has happy, hammy halls where Lola hopes you will skip and snuggle and see yourself as P.F.S., Pretty Friggin’ Spectacular (which is also the name of Angelo’s Traveling Wilburys tribute band).
(She also hopes you will provide hams, plural, to accompany her nogless eggs, but it’s not an entrance requirement.)
But once you leap through Lola’s lair and let her love fill you, there is a requirement.
Once you have glimpsed your P.F.S. nature, once you have baked your own potato, once you have flirted with being full of yourself, you must overflow.
You must welcome others.
You must welcome the cats and the people, the mystics and the mutants, the flatterers and the freaky-shriekies.
You must welcome them precisely in their peculiarities, the Special Needs and the special recipes for cauliflower macarons and the special secrets that will be revealed in the fullness of time.
To love is to love to the full.
Your life will improve dramatically as a result.
How true – I just had an epiphany! Cats (my Peanut) are so full of themselves that it is beyond ego. It is so much of who they are that they just are – and because of this truth, they have room for us, too. (Biting Dr. C’s leg like a drumstick! ooohhh!)