How would you know you were beautiful if nobody told you you’re beautiful?
No Tabby’s Place cat will ever be forced to confront this question.
I suppose there are people, mollusks, or senators who might question our aesthetic. I can picture them furrowing their brows or clutching their pearls: “If every cat is ‘beautiful,’ how can the world still have meaning?”
I hear them, and I put my hand over my heart. I can only hope they will someday see what we see. Our eyes are opalescent with the cataracts of kindness. Our lenses are lost in love.
Our cats are all beautiful, because “beauty” is a mansion with many rooms.
There is a room with a princess bed, gauzy canopy and all. The walls are covered in hand-painted unicorns and posters of Neil Diamond and Harry Styles. And perched on a tuffet, like the matchless beauty she is, is one Josephine Rosenberg.
Wait, where did she go? Oh, right. She has bolted into the back hallway again.
Beauty is as beauty does, and our geriatric princess has beheld the loveliness of juvenile delinquency. She may be on AARP’s mailing list. Tom Selleck may be trying to sell her a reverse mortgage. (Note that she has no Tom Selleck posters on her wall, although she does kinda like that new Magnum P.I.)
But Josephine is a beautiful teen, and you will not tell her otherwise.
Not that anyone would do such a thing at Tabby’s Place. Jo was described in her intake exam as (I quote): “Stinky old lady with only a few stinky old teeth left. Skinny and unkempt but very sweet.”
Which is to say: “breathtaking.”
“Perfect.”
“The world is not worthy.”
To which Josephine responded: “I know, right?” And then proceeded to gallop down the hall.
When you are near-toothlessly beautiful, you make everyone grin like goofuses (although Josephine prefers the archaic plural “goofi”). When you are well into your teens, you’re as excited as if you’ve just received your learner’s permit. When you are secure in your status as “sensational stunner,” you are more powerful than a full pageant of princesses.
By sheer force of her beauty, Josephine has convinced us to follow her lunch with dunch. I am not being cute. This is on the schedule. Busy people leave meetings to deliver aqueous meat products to an exuberant elderly tortoiseshell.
Beauty is as beauty does.
Jo and her curated display of teeth are feeling better these days. Some would say she is also smelling better, although she’s always appreciated Eau de Herself. Now she can focus all her skills and talents on her pageant promise.
Not world peace. Not universal basic cheeseburgers. Josephine aims higher.
Josephine aims at nothing less than the Lovelification of Suite FIV.
When you are beautiful, you behold beauty everywhere. Only the genuinely gorgeous can find splendor in the shaggy caterpillar or magnificence in a Mini-Wheat. It is a mark of Josephine’s beauty that she can ferret out the fabulous in the frat house.
Josephine says Wario is a dreamsicle.
Josephine says Rawlings is ravioli.
Josephine says Mr. Mustache is Tom Selleck, if Tom Selleck were 100% handsomer.
But if Tom Selleck should show up, Josephine just might rate him 100/10, too.
Beauty is as beauty does.
Now I need to go catch a princess in the hallway.