Is a pouch too much to ask?
Have we not all asked this question?
When fear is heavier than your weighted blanket, you feel like a feather on the breath of chaos.
Fleece will not suffice.
You are a cocoon dangling from the branch of chance, a papoose in the propeller of some jittering jetstream.
You need to be swaddled. You need to be carried safely.
You need a pouch.
You need to become a magnificent marsupial.
Tabby’s Place is a land of becoming. And so three big-eyed brothers, fully feline, became non-placental Australian mammals.
We are in the realm of myth and poetry, but that’s precisely where truth comes to life, and fear comes to its limits.
Koala, Quokka, and Wallaby may or may not dance the same double-helix, but they are kin at heart, which is where life lives.
Koala, Quokka, and Wallaby are not “real” marsupials, but they arrived burning for burritos, which is coincidentally both Taco Bell and Mylanta’s upcoming advertising slogan.
Everything about the boys wept to be wrapped.
Koala, the bravest wrap star, cuddled into our staff’s arms, spinning himself satchel-small, the better to be pouched. Life had been as pungent as eucalyptus, but Koala punched back with placid eyes and oceanic hopes.
Sure enough, our worried bear was on his way to being the first brother adopted, poached, pouched by huggable humans.
But Koala’s fellow marsupials were in the soup, which is where every living creature lands at last.
Worried Wallaby, a night sky with twin moon eyes, sought the sort of sleeping bag you’ll not find at R.E.I. He did not want a taco. He did not want adventure. He did not want a saxophone solo entitled “Wallaby’s Way.”
He wanted simply to feel safe, to be a small silken mammal in mercy’s pouch. Which is, of course, the great adventure.
When the hour is small and the chaos is cackling, there are two maps claiming safety. One is rutted with self-preservation, stuffing your ouch into a smaller and smaller pouch until you are a continent unto yourself. You may make it to Australia or the top of your field that way, but you will always be jostling, your elbows never fully tucked into a safe embrace.
The other map is mercy for someone even more scared than yourself. This would be Wallaby’s way.
Quaking like a neonatal wombat in a den of dingoes, Quokka was all eyes, no vision. I do not mean the handsome tabby couldn’t see — his senses were as sharp as crocodile teeth — but that fear blinded his sense of story.
Quokka could not feel that he was already snuggled in eighty-layer safety. Quokka could not hear that he was held at last, undroppable in unstoppable love. Quokka could not taste and see that this Grand Story was good, and safe, and his to keep.
And so Wallaby stepped over his own worries, and into Quokka’s quicksand.
This is a dangerous expedition, of course. They could both sink. Wallaby’s fragile peace could pop in the teeth of Quokka’s fear. Offer someone shelter in your own pouch, and your small safety might split down the seams.
Or you may find that safety grows.
You may see your favorite poem come alive.
You may become a story that others can tell, and it may become their road map out of fear.
You may even attract a friend like Vinnie, a mad marinara mammal with a secret map of all the delis in New Jersey.
Compassion is endlessly elastic. Love’s pouch can fit the planet.
You may be a magnificent marsupial after all.
The grand adventure continues for Quokka and Wallaby, who are learning to feel safe on this continent of chaos and kindness. But day by day, they feel themselves safe in the Tabby’s Place pouch.
We may be a grab bag of goofballs and grace-givers, but no one is ever dropped here.
Ever.
Is a pouch too much to ask? Not at Tabby’s Place.