A cynic is nothing but a broken heart with scar tissue.
Don’t tell them I told you. They might not like the implication: that they can heal.
Just listen when they claim that nothing in life is certain.
Listen, then tell them the story of Shirley.
Listen. I have let cynicism loiter on my front stoop, too. It knows the address of every big heart, and it arrives with a dozen roses. It arrives to offer sympathy. It remembers every time your hopes ran off a cliff and were not caught mid-air. It catalogues every little cruelty that leaves a mark, and every grief that goes on longer than it “should.”
Cynicism comes with condolences for being a feeler in a thorny world.
But if you let it sit down, it will shift from sympathy to solutions.
There is a way to avoid love’s wounds. Just give up the childlike things still cupped in your grown-up palms. Hope is a feather, lovely but fickle. Love is a sapling, too frail to bear your weight.
You may listen to what cynicism has to say. You may even offer it a cool glass of water, for it is always burnt and weary. Just don’t let it sit down, and don’t let it leave without hearing about Shirley.
Being a cat, Shirley was born outside the circle of cynics. A cat is silk, bones, and belief. She lives so close to the surface, she is one with her heart. This means she is never alone.
We do not know how far Shirley walked, only why. She knew there was life inside her, two heartbeats under her own. A pregnant stray can’t take anything for granted. Yesterday’s food source may be taken by today’s wind. Kind faces surface, then retreat.
If ever a creature had reason to conclude that nothing is certain, it should be Shirley.
But a mother cat memorizes the poetry of “yes,” even if she has never heard a good word. She is a small scientist, convinced the gravity of love is a law.
There is no question that she will give everything for the kittens inside her. She is her own certainty, sustained by some great hand.
So Shirley walked, though her heart was breaking and her body sore. She walked with the strength of those who hold onto hope. She knew she was sick.
A cynic would have lay in the grass and waited for hope to prove itself wrong. Shirley gave birth.
Some might say Shirley had no reason to believe kindness would come in time. Her life was no litany of miracles.
Yet Shirley had the evidence of her own heart. Though she was weak, she nurtured her newborns with newfound strength. If she could love her kittens so completely, love must be larger than the entire world.
It came naturally to give everything. The more she gave, the more she received. A stray cat with no name discovered a law of the universe.
The next chapter would seem to confirm the cynic’s gloom. Newborns Gladys and Leodis huddled together, with no Shirley in sight. Their mother’s illness had compromised the kittens. By the time love came, they were nearly past the point of saving.
But there was breath in their lungs and strength in their rescuer’s scarry hands. Need multiplied by mercy explodes into hope. The arithmetic is unfailing.
Kisses did not care that the kittens were covered in disease. Through fear, stink, and sleepless nights, the dying were delivered back to life.
Strictly speaking, there was no guarantee that we would ever find Shirley. All indications were that she had vanished to die alone. But cynics always cover their ears just before the crescendo.
The mother was found.
She became a Tabby’s Place cat. She will get to see everything she ever believed. Her kittens grew fat and strong, outliving all memory of fear. (They have also been adopted, together.)
Shirley will live out her days as a cat cherished and chosen.
Two creatures can walk the same Earth and come to different conclusions. One curses the thunderstorms that boggle their plans. The other measures her life in the inconveniences that summed up to meant-to-be’s.
One interprets the unexpected as proof that nothing has meaning. The other embraces the unexplainable as a promise that everything is possible.
One is too scarred to see that love is certain. The other is too honest to forget that love prevails, surely.
We can only promise the cynics that Tabby’s Place is a place of truth. We are not an anomaly. We are a spring from the river that runs under the whole world.
We are pulled by love’s gravity. We fall down. We break down in tears. We have no way to know in advance how our hearts will be broken.
We know Shirley will leave us too soon.
With fingers as nimble as love, our vet team removed a large tumor. Treatment will be palliative. We do not know Shirley’s days and hours, much less our own.
But love will give everything and end up with more.
Love will not look away from the least, the last, and the lost, though we all take turns sitting in that role. Our broken hearts will break open wider, and everyone we ever loved will be together inside.
Hope is never in vain. It is certain. Tell the cynics I told you.