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Precious and precarious

Precious and precarious

Prescott, Prescott, what have you seen?

Precious Prescott, can we make your ghost stories come untrue?

Prescott, little Prescott, you are far away as I write, miles from my arms and light years from my power.

Little feels as lonely as “helpless,” but I am not alone today. No sooner did I sigh, “I can’t stop thinking about Prescott,” than the sighs piled high: “me too,” “me three!” The Tabby’s Place staff is one gnarled love knot of concern today, our hearts as one for one grey cat.

Little feels as lonely as “helpless,” but you, Prescott, are neither. You are in the sturdy care of Dr. Fantastic, the emergency vet we trust with our precious gems and our rarest treasures.

Little feels as lonely as “helpless,” but you have never been less alone in your life. When you came from tiny Rhode Island to weird New Jersey, you came into a family that loved you before we held you.

Prescott, gentle Prescott, we are yearning to hold you now.

We yearn to hold the shards of your story in a way that doesn’t cut us to the bone. We hunger to hold out hope for a world that can do what was done to you. We long to hold, in the same hand, the truth of your trauma and the triumph of grace.

Prescott, innocent Prescott, I cannot write all that I know. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell my mother when she saw my worried eyes, choking out a children’s-book version of “the little grey moonshadow who was…hurt. Badly.”

You were the one in pain, your tail pulled, your temperature tumbling, thirsty and weary and bleeding. You were the one with every right to rage, to resent, to hunker down in hate.

But we were the ones who wailed, as though the pain were ours to bear.

Prescott, mysterious Prescott, you bore us on your sparrow-soft wings. If we prided ourselves on loving you without question, you loved us in the absence of answers, loved us more than our species can ever earn or re-earn.

You trusted us, tender and thrilled just to see your face reflected back in our teary eyes. Perhaps you’d never seen yourself before, never realized how beautiful you were, how good “love” looks on little grey cats with eyes like stars.

Prescott, celestial Prescott, you held this new hope so tightly, you knocked the anger out of our arms. If you were so fixed on the future, so confident in our kindness, we had no right to despair.

We had to deliver hope, as though born for the first time in history.

We had to press on, press our fingerprints into the soft clay of the new world you deserved.

We had to hurry, for your situation was precarious.

Prescott, precious Prescott, you were not guaranteed to make it through the night. Your urinary tract infection was clobbering your tiny kidneys; your architecture was in ruins; concerns for sepsis were real.

We wept; you hoped. We loved; you trusted. We whispered “precarious;” you defined it.

From the same Latin root for “prayer,” the word means “held through the favor of another.”

To be precarious is to live and thrive only if you are sheltered and chosen. To be precarious is to be only as safe as you are loved.

To be precarious is, at Tabby’s Place, to be precious.

To be held is to live in hope.

Prescott, priceless Prescott, you are held now, helpless no more, as strong as the story that love can write. The ghosts of your past cannot touch you, their prickly pencil shavings swept off your stripes with our very first kiss. The pen is in mercy’s hand.

The ending is both unknown and assured.

Your little sparrow body has miles to go, and we cannot know all it will take to heal you.

But Prescott, our Prescott, you are never more than a breath from your family now. You have come home. You have taken your place among the precarious — cats and people, wounded healers and sooty angels — and you have been held.

You have entered the true story.

You have entered our whole hearts, for our whole lives.

Prescott, beloved Prescott, together we are held. Together we will hold onto hope.

The rumors are true. Grace is non-fiction. Love prevails for the precarious.

Press on, Prescott my love.

1 thought on “Precious and precarious

  1. Oh! Squeezed my heart – Prescott, we are so hoping you will heal and thrive. Tabby’s Place is where miracles happen. I know it is already a miracle you are here, but I hope we are granted another miracle, the miracle of your survival, future good health and happiness. Please let it be so.

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