You were once named for stockings, but your gifts were too big to stuff.
You were once known for syrup, but your strength has a side of salt.
You came to notoriety in the way no cat would choose. A discarded licorice twist with eyes like Al Pacino, you made news from a cage. You were not scripted to make it out alive.
But revolutionaries and revisionists read about you on social media. You were one “time-stamped” cat in one public shelter, but in this hour you were Luke Skywalker and Frodo, Rocky and Siddhartha. You were the hero worthy of a full-length journey.
Time zones collapsed as timeless love took up your case. Our era’s storybook boldfaced your plight. Sophisticates and scholars may wince at these websites, but Facebook and Instagram punched above their weight. Fairy godparents at a hundred keyboards championed your cause.
You were weak and small. Your engine was jammed with sugar. You were named for fabric that keeps feet warm.
No one predicted what would happen when you wiggled your toes.
Mercy jiggles the handle until despair opens from the inside. Your advocates prevailed. You became a Tabby’s Place cat. Your bare feet sank into the sand of safety, and you became yourself.
“Socks” became “Arnold,” which can only be explained by salty angels who snicker suggestions into our ears. There was nothing in your forlorn form to suggest that you were strong. They told us you gasped at the bottom of the sugar bowl. They did not know that, when the lights went out and you caught your reflection in the stainless-steel cage, you saw the Terminator.
When the lights turned on and you looked around Tabby’s Place, you caught the headline. You were inked into a script that had unwritten rejection. You could not lose love. You could not lose love, not even if you turned turbulent and despotic. You could not lose love, not even if you raged against your gentle jellybean neighbor until she lost weight and vomited and wrote letters to her congressman requesting intervention. You could not lose love, not even if you earned the “orange collar” of a cat who asserts his rights with his teeth.
You could not lose love, so you could become your full self.
You menaced Marcia and rebuked your diabetes into remission. You played hacky-sack with your pill pockets and fell for your human lackeys. You somersaulted with your toys and told us, in pristine prose, that you were muscular and ageless and committed to a speaking role.
You earned the Academy Award for Handsomest Cat Evicted from Jonathan’s Office. Marcia was the presenter, but then you screamed naughty words and bit her (again), and they had to play you off the stage. You tell this story to everyone you meet.
You tell your story without coming up for air, making up for lost time in that silver cage. You tell everyone who will listen that you are solid gold. We tell you that people who will never meet you made way for your journey here. You tell us you will find a way to meet them all.
You are so strong, we have learned not to doubt you. But Arnold, you must remember that love has given us eyes as big as yours.
We see how you bread yourself in bravado, a gleaming crust of salt and sass. We see your valor, the virulent light of those who believe in themselves. We high-five your triumphant toes, free from socks, free from diabetes.
But Arnold, we know that you want warm feet as much as every child. We catch the comedy in your dramatic eyes. We collar you for crimes against your own reputation. You exult in love in our Adoptions Office. You are as sweet as the glucose that no longer gives you grief. You are as good as the slippers that say “well done” at day’s end.
You are bursting with beginnings, sugar and swagger, friendship and flourish.
You cannot lose our love, so you can keep becoming. And Arnold, your new name becomes you.