Let’s not be too hard on this planet. It may be responsible for low-rise jeans, halitosis, and individually wrapped cheese slices.
But it also gave us Dolly Parton, chickpeas, and cats who celebrate Bastille Day.
Or at least one. And he happens to be ours.
You know him. You love him. You want to be like him when you grow up.
He’s Maurice, the cross-eyed gentilhomme who is as gentil as the Beastie Boys.
He is like Jean Valjean, if his crime was not “stealing bread to feed his family” but rather “hiding fire ants in the vice-principal’s desk.”
He is like Claude Monet, but instead of painting water lilies, he would paint himself riding a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
He is like Louis XIV, but instead of a Hall of Mirrors, he would like … well, actually he would like a Hall of Mirrors an awful lot.
He is like Marcel Proust, but instead of madeleine cookies, he would like to eat bœuf croquettes in the likeness of lesser cats.
He is le grande fromage around here, and no one tells him otherwise. Why would we? He is l’amour on legs. He is one colossal cœur, courageous enough to show us exactly how he feels.
There is no strategy to Maurice’s sweetness.
He will always say “j’adore” first. If you don’t say it back, he will repeat it at increasing volume.
He is not ashamed of his passion for persons. He is the Eiffel Tower to overshadow our anxieties. He is the Arc de Triomphe for anyone brave enough to believe that love is the victory, come what may.
Even if every attempt at embrace should be rebuffed, Maurice would declare, “Non, je ne regrette rien.”
But no one rejects Maurice.
No one resists Maurice.
He will not lay down his love for you until you are his chouchou.
YOU WILL BE HIS CHOUCHOU.
Maurice is a one-chat French Revolution. There’s just one problem, l’éléphant in the room, if you will.
Maurice is not French.
Maurice is not even remotely French. Maurice is from New Jersey, which is the chemical and metaphysical opposite of France.
Maurice calls everyone “shawty,” even Jonathan. Maurice prefers nuggets to coq au vin.
Maurice is as French as a Wawa.
No one is going to tell Maurice this.
Maurice has invested too much time in learning every French term of endearment, from ma crotte (“my small round goat cheese”) to mon sucre d’orge (“my barley sugar”). Maurice asked Jonathan if we could formally change his middle name to Lafayette Rochambeau De Gaulle Pasteur.
Maurice had his birthday legally changed to July 14th, Bastille Day.
(Also, no one is going to tell Maurice that the big event on his favorite holiday was a bunch of folks storming the Bastille and … letting seven guys out. If he asks, tell him all seven were named Maurice.)
No, I’m afraid Maurice is simply not French.
Then again…the world is often wrong.
Who can say that a cat from the Garden State can’t have a Paris state of mind?
In the end, France is not a set of geographical coordinates. It is tenderness set free. It is the courage to love with abandon.
It is one abandoned cat’s dream that came true.
Nous t’aimons toujours, Maurice. We will always be your chouchous.