It’s impressive, but she doesn’t do it to impress anyone.
Polly is on a personal project, strictly between Polly and Polly.
She climbs so she can see farther.
If you are only looking at Polly with your eyes, you may hesitate. “See farther?” Preposterous. Polly has not “seen” a single thing as long as we have known her.
She came to Tabby’s Place with her eyelids stitched shut. Some old infection required this embroidery, and the world has been a single shade of midnight blue ever since. The little gingham cat in Suite I cannot “see” through her own fabric. We must be logical.
But it is a sad thing to only look with your eyes, and cats have no contract with logic.
If you listen to limits, you will live on the floor.
But the blind cat is so sure of her own sight, she is deaf to the doubters.
Polly has lived in Suite I long enough to know the waxing warmth of the sun as the day stretches from Breakfast to Lunch O’Clock. Every volunteer is a handmade wind chime, distinct and recognizable.
When Rihanna struts, the breeze stands still to admire. Bruno, that crusty old scone, smiles when no one is looking with their eyes. He does not mind that Polly sees.
Polly has mapped every square inch of this suite. She swishes like silk between the cubbies and the kitty door, at home at all elevations.
Polly knows when your jean pockets squish with squeeze-treat tubes, and she knows when you are empty-handed. If you have come to Suite I because it has been too long since you saw a kind face, you have come to the right suite.
Polly judges no one, least of all the empty-handed.
Suite I is a good world for a blind cat from Beirut. Polly may not know that her window seats are the color of clementines, but her toes no longer touch broken glass and rubble.
People place paper sailboats right under her nose, full of meals she did not have to catch. Everyone embraces her as she is, a cat gladly beheld but rarely touched. Little sleigh bells jangle for her joy in all seasons, and handmade catnip pillows make her glad to be awake. Yes, Suite I is a good world.
But the universe is always expanding, and a good world is one that is still growing.
Polly did not outlast her past just so she could park on the ground floor of “survival.” Her life at Tabby’s Place has been a path through portals, like one set of eyes opening after another.
When she began, she crouched in fear, missing the Beirut foster mom who loved her beyond measure. But new love hung a hammock in a window, held up by suction cups and confidence. Polly climbed and confirmed that new love could bear her weight.
Stout, strong cubbies coaxed her little cloud feet upwards. She learned the scent of human heads, bald and frizzy and baseball-capped and packed with love and bravery. Standing over us, but never putting herself above us, Polly saw the invisible spectrum. Everyone was her person, and every person was a world.
When the world beneath your feet is safe, you can rise with your eyes closed.
We do not know how Polly knew that there were cat ramps overhead. Architecture is odorless, and scaffolding does not normally sing.
But Polly has seen so much, belief takes the baton from sight. With no reason to believe there is a stair above her head, she reaches up a paw and finds a place to land. She climbs to heights she “can’t” sense. It is illogical, impossible. Sight is irrelevant, unnecessary.
Higher than her feet “should” take her, Polly beams.
Her dainty, pointy nose shines with every sunbeam she has ever collected.
She keeps them all, right next to the nicknames and singsongs from volunteers more beautiful than their own faces.
Polly has only begun. There is so much yet to see.