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One Patty

One Patty

We live in an age of excess.

We don’t just want eyeshadow, we want 570-shade palettes vast enough to make RuPaul proud.

We don’t just want a sandwich; we want the Arbynator, and cheeseburger-crust pizza, and the KFC Double-Down (presumably named because you will be doubly down for the count upon eating it).

Mercifully, we have cats to remind us when enough is enough.

It’s a strange time in history when the word “extra” becomes slang for “really frickin’ good.” (“Jupiter is my favorite planet. It’s so extra.”) Poor, pitiful “enough” is anything but; we want to be the girls and boys and cats with the most cake, and then thirty thousand cakes more.

So it’s a noble thing that Tabby’s Place lobby resident Patty spurns such slobbering. Of this particular cat, it will never be said, “She’s so extra!”

I’m not sure that you can even order a single-burger burger at any fast food chain nowadays, but we have definitive proof that one Patty is plenty. That’s not because she’s bad, but rather because she’s just so good.

Would we really need CSI: Moonachie if the original CSI-just-CSI was that great?
Would Skittles really need to inflict us with the likes of “Sweet Heat” if the standard Skittles were that super?
Do you really need eleven purses if you have one you love enough to wear every day?
Is there any way that multiplying Patty could possibly add to her perfection?

(Answer key: no; yes because they messed up the standard by scrapping lime; no but it’s OK if you want them; and oh heck no.)

So it’s a pity and a pickle that Patty’s perfection is masked by her total lack of desire to shout her superiority. While larger, louder egos shriek their excess into the skies (we’re looking at you, Olive), Patty placidly pads around the Lobby, content to let her innate awesomeness do the talking.

Fortunately, it does.

You may be drawn first to scampering Olive or wild-wonder Jonathan (whose hair is, indeed, so extra), but, sooner or later, you’ll find yourself beside the moon-eyed beauty with the quiet kindness. Content to let time and gentleness tell her tale, Patty will softly land beside you on the couch, half-leaning into your lap. Her greeting is more “How’s it going?” than “DYNAMITE HOT DOG GANGSTA!”, but she’ll hamburglarize your heart no less.

(Nota bene: the latter greeting is more likely from Walter, who is clearly the Guy Fieri of the Lobby.)

Think about it. You may check out a restaurant for their flashiest offerings — say, gold-crusted Eritrean prawns baked into a cheeseburger pie — but you’ll go back for your go-to goodies. Patty is the comforting, uncomplicated grilled cheese sandwich that will always make you smile. She’s the vanilla cone that will calm your senses from the too-muchness of the modern age.

She’s a five-star love bug, inspiring in her willingness to simply be herself.
She’s utterly enough.

Alas, the sweet and the simple are not without their foes. Patty may seem as inoffensive a cat as you’ll ever meet, but still she’s inflamed the Mayor of Flavortown himself. Walter just doesn’t know what to make of Patty’s serene self-confidence, and he does his best to slap some funk and flash into her.

But, for all his fire, Walter isn’t as strong as soft Patty. She is precisely who she is, and not even Olive could convince her to throw on some extra cheese.

By all means, keep your eleven purses, kittens. I love my palatial palettes, too. But may we never be so extra that we overlook the calm, the comforting, and the “exactly enough.” Beneath all the cheese and sriracha, we’re all a bunch of plain patties in need of love.

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