There are orange collared cats, and then there are orange frosted cats.
There are final warnings, and then there are new beginnings.
Lorna Doone has never been entirely at ease with her name.
If “Conquering Queen” was not available, “Brynhild the Omnipotent” would have been acceptable.
If we insisted upon a food item, might it not have been “Carolina Reaper” or at least “Lady Liverwurst”? And if it absolutely had to be a cookie, couldn’t it have been something homemade? With cayenne?
But “Lorna Doone” she became, and “Lorna Doone” she remains. The tabby the color of stars has the same monogram as jaunty shortbreads in a blatant yellow wrapper.
Lorna Doone has not been “jaunty” for an hour of her life.
She has been confident. She has been sufficiently confident to engage in hand-to-hand combat with Genghis Khan and emerge victorious. She has been so confident, several Tabby’s Place staff members have paid her to record secret memos we listen to when we are afraid. She has cauldrons of confidence in every room of her castle, and they bubble with intentions.
She has been tireless. Let the other cats sleep eighteen hours a day. Let the humans worry about Golden Bachelors and stock markets. The stocky silver cat has goals, and they are not about to achieve themselves. Lorna Doone aims at nothing short of dominion.
She has been impatient. At least, this is my interpretation. (I may or may not be bound by a contract obliging me to provide Lorna Doone with both mollusks and legal defense.) Who can blame her? When you know that your ideas are best for all planets, you must hustle the wandering stars into place, for their own good. You must bite them like biscuits. You must discipline them with authority. You must accept if this means 67% of humans and senators live in fear of you.
She has been terrifying and inspiring in the same breath. This is Tabby’s Place, so we are smitten with the tabby of many teeth. We would all like to be a little more like Lorna Doone. We compare the topographical maps on our arms and forget they are scars. Lorna Doone remembers our patience.
She has been sweet. She does not mind my telling you. (If she did, be assured I would not be telling you.) The nougat heart of intensity is always love. Lorna Doone is no shortbread. She is fondant and fondness. She is a ten thousand layer truffle. She is rolled in cayenne, indeed, but her magma runs soft as buttercream. She rages, because she cannot contain all this flavor. She attacks, because she is assaulted with astonishment.
She has attacked, and attacked, and attacked.
She has not been in danger an hour of her Tabby’s Place life.
This is the part of the recipe where some would say we’ve made a mistake. Ten cups of sugar for a single cookie? That can’t be right. One million metric tons of patience for one aggressive cat? Must be a typo. Give up already. Go pick up a store-bought cake. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.
That’s not the Tabby’s Place way.
The Tabby’s Place way wraps Lorna Doone like a burrito, screaming newly-invented expletives all the way, and settles her into Danielle’s office suite. (The Nobel Committee and Time‘s Person of the Year have already settled on their honoree.)
The Tabby’s Place way does The Wave for one silver despot at the center of the stadium.
The Tabby’s Place way gets everyone dancing as one, going out of our own way for the one and only cat who will ever be Lorna Doone.
It’s the way of love that can do anything except get lost.
It’s the way that may or may not make someone change, but it will make her safe.
It’s the only way.