I would like to thank the unknown genius who named the invisible moon “new.”
Selena would like to thank the moon itself.
If the cosmos is feline, the full moon is a kitten. She has been fed. She hides nothing, fears nothing, holds nothing back. She is a proud orb.
But time intervenes, and kittens get in over their heads. Disappointments shave slivers from their courage. The full-grown cat may wane gibbous, a wary oval.
Loss craters each life. If we are lucky, we sit together, paws and feet swinging off the edge. We know the light never really leaves.
But sometimes, we forget we ever remembered that everything is possible.
The only cure is to become new again.
Someone once looked at a brown tabby cat and saw a face full of light. That is how she became “Selena,” the goddess of the moon. She was loved, in full.
She lived long enough to major in astronomy. (Literally.)
And then, the stars fell.
Selena’s planet was her person. They danced safe in the gravity of love. Selena reached sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Her striped body survived such meteors as inflammatory bowel disease. But nothing prepared her for the end of the beginning.
The light of her life needed nursing care.
The light in Selena’s eyes dropped under the horizon.
We have been here before at Tabby’s Place. We welcome a heavenly body who is grief wrapped in fur. We come on like the sun, all yellow with comfort.
But the mourning moon cannot face us. No matter how lavish our love, she must grieve for as long as she has to grieve.
We have not been there before, for every sorrow is its own.
Selena accepted her new space station, the Community Room. She ascended the tallest cat tree. She sat as stoic as a satellite. She turned nineteen without turning to look us in the eyes.
I do not know the poet who first looked at the sky, saw the darkest moon, and cried, “it’s new!” A lesser soul would have called it “gone.” A petulant earthling would accuse the moon of abandonment.
Things may look very dark when you are in process.
Everyone is in process.
Selena, like her namesake, dared to go dark. I do not know where the moon goes when it slips our sight. But the moon knows where to gather light, and the moon knows better than to rush.
She does not send letters to reassure us she is okay. She just returns with overflowing arms.
When the moon is feline, she returns with craters. She has made room. She has opened up to possibility again.
The light starts shyly, a fingernail half-smile in the sky. The light leans into love’s memory and grows gibbous again.
Selena looked around and recognized something old and new. This room and its people were full of love. They were not her first planet, but they could be her home planet.
The atmosphere was unconditional.
And just a few feet away, another cat was pulling possibility like the sea.
Selena watched as Buster, age eighteen, was adopted. It was improbable. It was immense.
Buster had lost his beloved, too. Death had split his sky. He had holed up in a crate for many months at Tabby’s Place. He had emerged to accept the sun in the window box.
He had left a woman moonstruck, and her amore filled his heart. She returned, returned, and returned, until she had the knack of administering Buster’s subcutaneous fluids. They rejoiced, rejoiced, and rejoiced, until they became family.
Selena saw it all.
“Impossible” is emptied of meaning when love is full.
It is safe for the old cat to become new. Selena rolls her soft head into our neck-scratches and our promises. Selena may hide and hesitate again. But the light will never leave.
We are all in process here.