What are we doing here?
Perhaps that’s an awfully vast question for a little cat blog.
Perhaps that’s the only question for a little cat blog.
Perhaps that’s the only question, full stop.
Up to our earlobes in wry, wriggling friends, we try to listen closely at Tabby’s Place.
We listen to heartbeats, the kick-drums of life.
We listen to stories, told and sighed.
We listen to secrets flashed by golden eyes, the poetry of a tail sway.
And when it gets quiet enough, we remember we’re listening for big answers.
When ten cats bluster across the Atlantic to be with us, we have to ask: what are we doing here?
What is Tabby’s Place up to, such that a decade of whisker-children from Beirut find no softer landing in all the continents than here in our scarred arms?
What are we doing, stretching stubby fingers to the ends of the earth, impatiently stretching the universe itself, to make room for the most ragged?
Mika, trembling and exultant, arrives already a queen, a neurologically-different street cat turned international sweetheart.
Firestar, with snurpy sinuses and a broken jaw, leaves the land of his birth to deliver mirth, wild unjarred marmalade spreading the power of a survivor’s smile.
Firestone, one eye and one thousand dreams, falls off a cosmic charm bracelet and into the ecstasy of the instantly-adored.
Ebony, bleating like a black lamb, leaks her travelogue, and her tragic past, and her love for cats and humans and the great wide mystery itself.
There are so many “easy” cats in this world, neatly potted petunias with nary a tendril out of place. There are so many winners, so many paved paths, so many storybooks.
What are we doing here with our band of beloveds, the brokenhearted and the lion-hearted, the cracked eggs and the shivering bunnies?
What are we doing here, first in line for the last cats picked?
We say their names: Firestar! Firestone!
We sing their names, croon and swoon into them: Mika! Ebony!
We know, in our own thumping hearts, that every living creature hopes to hear her name in love’s accent.
We say their names, and we hear each other’s.
It’s an outrageous, bodacious thing, isn’t it? We are a rumpled band of nurturers and medicators, weepers and professionals, writers and brushers, moppers and scoopers, veterinary angels and rebel hearts born to beat an impossible rhythm.
Impossible: the last shall be first, the lost shall be held, the far shall come near, the table shall be set.
Impossible: the odd shall be glad, the brittle kissed, the forgotten crowned.
Impossible: love shall be unconditional and unending.
What are we doing here?
Nothing short of remaking the world.
Nothing short of being signal flares for another world.
Nothing short of proving the rumors are true: with love, nothing is impossible.
What are we doing here?
Life to the full.
