What does twenty-three look like?
It depends upon who you ask.
If you ask the average five-year-old, twenty-three looks the same as thirty-seven and fifty-five and seventy-two, which is to say, “Way Old.”
Twenty-three is too busy for movies with unicorns, or checking under the porch for fairies and kittens. Once you are Way Old, you forget what you should have remembered.
But Braveheart is not the average five-year-old. Our blind cat with feline leukemia virus (FeLV) can see twenty-three.
To Braveheart, twenty-three is just when a dream comes of age. Twenty-three is a big enough number to cradle F-e-L-V, four letters that can mean either “hopeless” or “honored,” depending on who you ask. Twenty-three is the gestation period of both goodness and greatness. Twenty-three is the time it took for one stubborn, sturdy seed of hope to grow into the cat tree where Braveheart sleeps in peace.
Twenty-three is the number of years Tabby’s Place has been saving cats from hopeless situations. Today, October 5th, is our birthday.
Braveheart is not quite clear on his own birthday, so if it’s okay with everyone, he is going to borrow October 5th, OK? You lose track of milestones when your toes are scuffed from shuffling over asphalt. One year bleeds into another when you are homeless and famished. You feel Way Old, long before your time.
But these days, Braveheart feels five.
Since there is a Tabby’s Place, Braveheart left the documentary about the dying Baltimore stray with no name, and became the star of the movie about unicorns sunbathing in solariums while gnomes bring meat salads. At least, Braveheart has a hunch that he and the other FeLV+ cats are unicorns. He has never seen evidence to the contrary. And if you ask any cat, they will confirm that humans are just gnomes by another name.
If you ask the average scientist, twenty-three looks like the human genome. Whether you are a supermodel or a seaweed farmer, you have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes in every cell. They square-dance down the double helix, flipping levers to give you brown eyes, or curly hair, or that birthmark that looks like Pedro Pascal. Twenty-three is fact and destiny, looks and limitations.
But Uni is not the average scientist. First of all, cats have nineteen pairs of chromosomes, not twenty-three, because cats needed the extra room for atoms that contain infallibility and perfection. Also, cheese storage.
But Uni is unequivocally uninterested in the chatter of chromosomes, whether yours, hers, or Pedro’s. Chromosomes conspired to give her gastrointestinal festivities. This first put her life in danger as a kitten, and it makes her “difficult to adopt” to this day.
But compassion careened around chromosomes to give her Tabby’s Place.
Chromosomes may be facts, but they are not fate. Chromosomes may call you names, but twenty-three calls you beloved. Twenty-three also calls out, “Uneeeee-EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” as you sprint down the hallway like a snickering tuxedo unicorn.
Twenty-three is our history of love, nearly a quarter-century of choosing the Bravehearts and Unis because love chose us first.
If you ask the average senior citizen, twenty-three looks like a lifetime ago. Twenty-three is too young to know there is a second innocence on the far side of “Way Old.” There are twenty-three-year-olds more ancient than any centenarian. There are twenty-three-year-olds too proud to see the pixies under the porch. There are twenty-three-year-olds in every ad for a new potion promising to sandblast the years off your face.
But Tux is not the average senior citizen. Tux is the only cat who has reached the age of twenty-three under our roof. This is not because his life has been a trouble-free tuffet of ease and enchiladas. Tux endured a hoarding situation, a broken pelvis, heart disease, and the heartache of getting most of his friends adopted.
He has served long hours as the Comforter-in-Chief of our Community Room, tending to traumatized new arrivals until they believe in love.
Whether it was chromosomes or a conspiracy of angels, Tux has been granted long life. The Grandpa Cat of the Community Room has gathered enough years to consider us all his babies, to forgive the past, to get a Master of Divinity, and to become younger than he was the first time around.
But twenty-three is still not enough years, so Tux lives on.
If you ask around at Tabby’s Place, twenty-three is a mystery. Some of us have been here long enough to remember the days when everyone wondered, but nobody said out loud: are we going to make it? Saving cats from hopeless situations! It is outrageous. It is everything. Are we alone on this odyssey?
But to worry is always to be Way Old.
And twenty-three years have restored our youth.
Because you, Tabby’s Place family, galloped forth like unicorns in a one-horse world. All around you, other people grow grey, gnawing the gristle of pride and hustle. They are too busy to peek under the porch, where Jonathan first saw Tabby.
But you have given twenty-three years to the littlest and the lost.
You caught Love’s eye, in the gaze of the orphans and seniors and paraplegics and diabetics and the fearful and the flatulent and the hopeless and the innocent.
You have saved over five thousand unique, irreplaceable cats and ensured each one knew without doubt that they are treasured.
You have made the world safer, braver, gentler, and younger.
If you ask us, twenty-three looks like the best is yet to come.
Happy birthday, Tabby’s Place family.