You may not find Spidermen and unicorns going door-to-door for Snickers bars in Beirut.

But you can find a candy-colored calico snickering at her neighbors at Tabby’s Place.

Just go easy on Peeka. This is her first Halloween.

When you are starving, you have a flexible definition of “treats.” An empty belly is not fussy. The minimum requirement for a “treat” is that it be something other than nothing. When no one will open their door to you, no matter how cute you are, even a discarded Dum Dum pop is a feast.

Peeka’s stomach churned like a cauldron. As a stray in Beirut, she searched the streets for scraps of survival. Her calico coat clung to her ribs, like a costume three sizes too small. Each morning, she dressed herself in courage to try again.

But there is hope in every neighborhood on Earth, and sweetness dares to enter bitter places. Actual angels, disguised as “ordinary people,” found Peeka in her despair. Everything changes the moment someone sees you as a treasure.

Still, it can take time to trust that love is not a cruel trick.

Peeka did not know that mercy was moving on her behalf. There is a bond between Beirut and Tabby’s Place, braided into a cord as strong as ten thousand Twizzlers. Peeka caught a hayride across the Atlantic, to the “house” where no one is ever haunted by hunger again.

If you have ever received a full-size Milky Way when you expected a box of stale raisins, you know how Peeka felt. It was like finding the entire universe at the bottom of a plastic pumpkin.

No, it was better than that. It was finding three meals a day, without fail. It was astonishing. It was as nourishing as normalcy. When you are ravenous, routine is the finest delicacy.

But when you have felt unsafe for too long, you keep expecting someone to leap out and yell, “BOO!”

Peeka decided to take matters into her own claws. She would yell it first.

Maybe, if she slashed the hands filled with treats, it wouldn’t hurt so much when they stopped coming. But no matter how much she cloaked her fear in anger, Tabby’s Place people kept seeing through.

Peeka peered out from inside her mask. She let it slip when a chin skritch made her feel like a kitten again. The sweetness of these strange faces did not appear to be painted on. It was almost enough to make her reveal her own marshmallow filling…

…but, no. BOO!

There had been moments of fullness before. Street life treated Peeka to fun-sized gulps of hope, only to leave her parched and empty the next day. How could she know this was not all a masquerade?

Her Tabby’s Place suite was the safest and coziest place she had ever seen, and every promise sounded true. But Peeka had never depended on anyone before. She wavered between growling and gentleness. She could not quite get trust to fit over her head.

She ran into the hallway, like the eight-year-old Spiderman running away from home.

Her logic was tragic: if you break your own heart, no one can beat you to the punch.

Also, punching Shaggy makes everything better.

Let’s blame the carbs for that. Although squeeze-chicken and tuna shreds are not known for their sugar content, they land like pixy sticks on Peeka’s tongue. The taste of “not starving” turns her as rowdy as a one-cat kindergarten.

But maybe it’s more than that. After all, why Shaggy? You couldn’t find a sweeter cat from New Jersey to the Near East. Shaggy is not a marshmallow. Marshmallows have some solidity and structure, three dimensions. Shaggy is the marshmallow fluff that oozes off the spoon. Shaggy is perpetually melted, a goo-fest of trust. He is the googly eyes on the goofiest gourd in the neighborhood. He is so happy-go-lucky, it’s more than luck.

He looks a lot like Peeka, when Peeka looks at the present instead of the past.

It’s a fearsome thing to see what you might look like undisguised.

So take it easy on Peeka. She is learning that treats can be trusted, and kindness is life’s true face. She is testing the strength of safety to see if it can hold her growing weight.

She is yelling “BOO!” until she trusts that another word will always answer: “Beloved.”

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