We know this blog is your primary source for answers to life’s greatest mysteries.
So if you lay awake at night wondering, “what would the guy who sang ‘Frosty the Snowman‘ look like if he were a cat?” … you’re in the right place.
You already know which cat you would be.
I know you know, because you’re our kind of human. You feel so connected to the cats, you can’t help but wonder whose jellybean toes you would step into, should you be promoted to felinity.
Would you be Berry, the mighty muffin who laughs at setbacks like streusel? Would you be Atari, ageless and incandescent? Might you be Olive, pungent and perfect? Perhaps you would be Vinnie, a poet in black velvet, or Trifecta, the humble healer. You can’t be Gator, because Matthew McConaughey has already taken that honor.
And you can’t be Jolly, because Jolly is Jimmy Durante.
Jimmy Durante, for those of you who are less than 500 years old (age being one reason my feline doppelgänger is Smoothie), was a comedian and singer, beloved in the mid-20th century.
He had a scratchy voice, a soft heart, and a schnozzola the size of Manhattan. (“Schnozzola” is his word, not mine. “Schnozzola” is also overdue to be a kitten name.) He sang “Frosty the Snowman,” “As Time Goes By,” and something called “Inka Dinka Doo” (also urgently needed as a kitten name).
But he was never seen in the same room, at the same time, as Jolly.
Ergo, it is evident they are the same cat.
Jolly is not like any other cat. When the angels drew their first draft of Jolly, they agreed that his nose was so nice, they should triple it. They also agreed that Jolly was so nice, they should try to make him twice. That is how we got King.
King is not Jolly, although King is jolly, and Jolly is only jolly in the presence of King.
King is the coconut cupcake with silver glitter. Jolly is sweet potato pie with Reddi-Wip, and also the kind of fun uncle who will spritz Reddi-Wip directly onto your nose.
They do not look alike. They also look exactly alike.
It’s all in the schnozzola.
The brothers were blessed with notable noses. They look like proboscis monkeys. They look like Jimmy Durante.
They look to each other, and the family resemblance soothes them. They have been each other’s constant in a mad, mad, mad, mad world. Rescued from the same small apartment as the Darling Dozen, they know what it means to be scrunched.
Such trauma takes time to heal. The boys arrived at Tabby’s Place nervous, still nose-to-nose with the broken promises of the past. You cannot just yell “inka dinka doo!” and expect survivors to break into song. You can only put them in the rays of beaming faces.
And as time goes by, you can make someone happy.
Jolly was not used to being happy. He was used to cramped spaces. But his Tabby’s Place suite was as wide as mercy, only with more toys.
Long-legged people crouched and scrunched, clearing their calendars to be by Jolly’s side. Walk by Suite E, and you might see half a human sticking out from under the bank of crates. Their unseen fingers skritched Jolly’s chin, then King’s. Their unhurried peace prevailed.
Like the old comic strips where the visible aroma of lasagna lures Garfield through the air, love began to tug on Jolly’s nose. He tugged on King in turn.
There would be no solos on this debut album, only duets. There was a world out there, and there was no denying it smelled safe. It smelled of other things, too, but they don’t write ragtime songs about those. (Shaggy is working to remedy that.)
Though his schnozzola was twitching, it was Jolly’s heart that sensed the truth.
Everyone here loved him so much, there was room for every inch of his essence to unfurl. He was worthy and wanted. In fact, the long-legged people all kinda wanted to be more like him.
Tail in the air, Jolly exhaled trust. He knew what to do. He was given that nose for nuzzling. After all, his favorite song is “Make Someone Happy.”
The song is not “Make Everyone Happy.” It asks only that you “make just one, someone happy.”
It is much easier to make “everyone” happy. You can dance across a stage or cancel Mondays and make “everyone” happy. You will never make “everyone” happy if you spend all your time laying on the linoleum blinking into one cat’s eyes, or losing track of time stroking one nervous nose. It is rather inefficient to make “just one someone happy.”
But just ask Jolly, King, and dear Mr. Durante:
“Make just one someone happy … and you will be happy, too.”
Love can only count as high as one at a time. It is Jolly taking care of King. It is King sheltering Jolly. It is the volunteer scrunched down to cat size, until one cat feels full-sized. It is why we aspire to be more like the cats. It is Tabby’s Place, cat by cat by cat by cat.
It is the greatest mystery of the world.
Two spectacular noses know.
PS: And here’s more reason to be happy: Jolly and King have just been adopted by two of the dearest, truest, most lovable, loving volunteers in Tabby’s Place history. They now go by the perfect names Perry and Mason. It was meant to be.