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Life’s protest

Life’s protest

We talk about Life more than usual this time of year.

Perhaps it’s because we need it so desperately, weary of brown fields and whipping cold.

Maybe it’s because Life itself starts getting fidgety and feisty around us, little yellow buds singing protest songs at a grim sky.

Your friends don’t dance, and if they don’t dance, well, they’re…actually still friends of Birdie.

I’m banking on this: we find ourselves leaning into Life because we know it wins, dang the evidence.

Life is Birdie, dancing just because she can.

Life is Maria, flustered but not felled by age and anxiety and the mother of all urinary tract infections. Healed of a horror that could crush a lesser creature, Maria is celebrating her recovery by abandoning the Community Room for the Lobby. Watch out, world.

Life is Bassoon bouncing so vigorously onto her cat tower that she broke on through to the other side, nearly breaking a leg in the process, only to bounce and bound towards beloved humans (by which I mean all humans) at the next available opportunity. Fall down (er, through) six times, get up seven.

Life is Fred, all 21+ pounds of him, adapting with aplomb to life in the calorie-controlled Lounge. Who needs nachos when your sister — Flossie — lives just cuddlable inches away? Well, Fred does, but he’s not waiting to live ’til aforementioned nachos appear.

Life is Puzzle pounding lymphoma, as well as our eardrums with his fine feisty falsetto that can only be translated “love meeeeee to life.” Refuse that demand? Don’t be silly.

Dont be Puzzled. Life loves you more than you could ever return the favor.

Life is Shea shyly shuffling around all people-types, practically wearing a giant foam “F” on his head for “Feral”, only to get ringworm, get a three-week course of lime sulfur dipping, and get back to Suite FIV with SO MUCH LOVE for humanity that he’ll rub your face off. And you won’t regret it, not with this late-have-I-snuggled-thee sweetheart.

Life is Amos adjusting to life as Jonathan’s second supervisor, all purrs and quasi-comatose cuddles where once there were snarls and enough spitting to slosh over an Olympic-sized spittoon.

Life is Miriam making much of her massive size, strutting through our Hospital like she owns it, which she does. We may have first put her Casa Vet Team because she couldn’t abide other cats, but it’s become every inch her empire of Life. Bonus: she only sees her own species when they’re caged or anesthetized, which she has generously deemed acceptable states for non-Miriam felines.

Life is you and me, loving through the noise and fear and inertia.

Shine on, Shea-style.

Life is tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, rolling towards us like cinnamon pinwheels of promise.

Life is stronger and feistier and truer than death, which doesn’t know the first thing about daffodils or dancing or resurrection.

Find your way into Life’s arms this spring, kittens. It will not let you go or let you down. One hundred twenty cats are cheering you on.

1 thought on “Life’s protest

  1. Lovely to meet Birdie and Amos and Shea, and of course, Fred and Flossie, Bassoon and Puzzle. And then – Miriam! News about Miriam! Thank you so much for writing about Miriam and introducing us to a little bit about her daily life. (I feel like it was a gift) Spring is wonderful.

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