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Please break our hearts, Part III: Steven

Please break our hearts, Part III: Steven

When we are children, we do our own stunts. We tell our parents we want nuggets, not broccoli. We tell a stranger with a white polyester beard that we want dinosaurs.

We are brave. We say what we want.

Then we grow up and get scared.

Well, this holiday season, I am channeling my inner child.

I am asking you for exactly what I want. I am asking you to break my heart. I am asking you to adopt Steven.

We have known Steven since he was a kitten. When Steven was a kitten, he looked like a great-great-granddaddy. He looked like a golden raisin. He weighed less than a Sprite. He wanted to be bubbly, but he did not have the strength.

He was, in formal veterinary language, “fixin’ to die.”

But the dehydrated child became a child of promise.

The orange knot of need softened at love’s touch.

This is Tabby’s Place, where five-week-old kittens come back from shriveling. Death is a cocky dingbat, and we mock it to its face. Steven lived. The raisin resurrected to a grape and began to bounce. He bobbled, bimbled, and burglarized every heart in the Tabby’s Place lobby. We passed him around like a secret, so he could hear every heartbeat.

The year was 2009, when the last pterodactyls were still seen over New Jersey. At least, that is the only reasonable explanation for what happened next.

Steven was not afraid of people. When you are born the color of streusel, you expect every day to top yesterday. Steven’s young life was a sweetness showdown. Even when he told us that he did not want to use the litter box, nothing changed. Love, if it is really love, does not shrivel.

But something scared Steven.

Blame it on the pterodactyls, but one day, we could not find our cinnamon kitten. Steven was not in the bed shaped like a pineapple. Steven was not in anyone’s arms. Steven was obviously not in the litter box. The blankets were bereft. The lobby was silent, forlorn for lack of frolicking.

Curiosity turned to panic. We all began calling his name. But the kitten was gone. The sweetness was gone. I was not the only one who crossed the brink of tears.

And then Denise entered the lobby.

Denise, our Medical Director, had been Steven’s foster mother. But she had done more than hydrate the husk of a kitten back to life. She had been his home-slice and confidante. When Denise raised her eyebrows, Steven raised his eyebrows. Denise and Steven could conduct entire conversations without saying a word. Steven believed in sweetness, because proof was walking around in scrubs and a stethoscope.

And now she was calling his name. “Steven. SteeeEEEEEEEEven.”

The kitten was not gone. “Myoooooou!” He did not say “meow.” He did not say “mew.” He said “myooooou,” as in “you, Denise, are my only hope.”

The sound was coming from the sofa at the center of the lobby. The story has entered into Tabby’s Place lore. Steven, for reasons known only to Steven, had spelunked upwards into the springs and stuffing, only to find himself stuck.

Once again, Denise saved his life. We all cheered, we all cried, and we all agreed to tell Steven’s adopter to keep an eye on couches. Probably good to watch those ottomans, too.

But Steven’s adopter never came.

The years came, and the years gave, and the years took away. The couch in the lobby reached the end of its natural life. Other kittens from the class of 2009 were adopted.

Over fifteen years, Steven sprinkled streusel in nearly every suite at Tabby’s Place. He turned plump as a peach. He offered sunbeams to every heart that beats. He closed his eyes in anticipation of every forehead kiss. He traveled light years from youth. The raisin-turned-grape was aging better than any wine, but there was no denying … he was aging.

Unlike children, kittens don’t pretend to grow up.

Steven continued to ask for what he wanted.

He wanted to audition for the lead role of Weighted Blanket, ennobling laps and smothering worries. He wanted to loll like a glow worm in the solarium, a beatific beach ball in constant conversation with Denise and all the saints and angels.

He wanted to ride a green stroller through the gardens of Tabby’s Place, wind tickling his ear hair. He wanted season tickets to unconditional love, the kind that accepts “inappropriate elimination” and unanswered questions.

He wanted, and still wants, to increase the sum total of sweetness in this world.

He is fifteen, which is still young enough to believe that peace is possible.

Some would say that, after fifteen years, Steven’s adoption is not possible.

Some would say that, with a litter box RBI of something like 0.01, Steven’s adoption is not possible.

I say: such people want too little.

I want a world where imperfect creatures adopt each other in their entirety.

I want you to adopt Steven.

I also don’t want you to adopt Steven.

The only thing impossible for Steven is unkindness. You will find one last pterodactyl in New Jersey before you find a mean moment in Steven’s timeline.

There is speculation that Steven’s litter box “issues” stem from oxygen deprivation in the days when he nearly died. Perhaps that is true. But whatever Steven lost when sickness gnawed his neurons, he gained something most of us spend our whole lives trying to get back.

Steven has invincible innocence.

Selfish toddler that I am, I do not want to lose a friend like that.

But whether he vanishes into the couch or leaves Tabby’s Place in your arms, we can never really lose Steven.

Once Steven is your best friend, you have a best friend beyond the limits of this lifetime. Once Steven loves you, part of you will never forget that everything is possible.

Once you adopt Steven, you will break every heart at Tabby’s Place.

We want you to break our hearts.

The eternal cinnamon child is waiting for you.

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