Cats do not entertain our view of failure.

This is appropriate, since no cat since the dawn of the species has experienced a single failure.

Lynette knows it’s no failure to need more insulin. Diabetes is a superpower when you are a long-haired supernova.

Hips knows it’s no failure when Prescott says “TAKE A BREATH, YOU RABID RHINOCEROS!” They have kick-boxed and kicked up their heels for seven straight hours; he would like an eighth. But the pause in their pageantry will make the next round radder.

Eartha knows it’s no failure when no one on planet Earth has any idea what Eartha is talking about.

This is not to say that cats lack any concept of failure.

Gator considers it a failure of courage that you have yet to take a chance on road-stand scrapple, “HOMEMADE DAILY.”

Alex deems it a failure of integrity that you have yet to free Suite C from the shackles of a sausageless existence.

Lost laments our failure of imagination in assuming Lost can lose.

We shall never know how the cacophonous calico got her name, only that she is the loudest Tabby’s Place resident this side of Grecca, and that she finds herself quite entertaining.

Lost will sing you songs by Neil Young, Saucy Santana and the Jonas Brothers (group and solo recordings).

Lost will sing you the Kars 4 Kids jingle.

Lost will sing you “Rhinestone Cowboy” (and convince you it was written about Firestar).

Lost will sing you the entire score of Evita with no intermission.

Lost will sing loss into submission.

If our lives were a novel (let the reader understand that, in fact, they are), not even the author could have predicted this. But stories unfurl faster than writers can understand, and poetry breaks into prose without permission.

By any reasonable assessment, Lost’s plotline looked quietly failure-full, a banquet of burdens too heavy for one calico. In some early chapter, she suffered a broken hip: a clear failure of bones and sinews to keep their promises of protection.

Just a few pages later, Lost was abandoned on the steps of a city clinic: a complete power failure of love.

In every paragraph, Lost sizzled with neurological symptoms: a failure of mercy for a cat already carrying so many stones.

We see granite griefs. Lost sees sapphires.

We see green eyes that have seen too much. Lost looks out of those peridots, straight through the strife, and she sees…us.

We look over Lost’s life and feel our fists curling as tight as an infant’s, anger rising like wildfire.

Lost says we dare not fail to turn anger into music.

After all — she circles your legs like a tricolor prophet, all truth and screaming — dare we judge failure before the final page?

Wouldn’t it be a fumbly failure of creativity to count the loss but not the gain?

Lost does not shout because she is naive or in denial. Her little pelvis no doubt aches; her twitching interferes with her plans. Other cats roll their eyes.

Other disappointments will drop like lead dumplings.

No one will arrive with the bison-meat dumplings of her dreams.

But could any of this be a failure when Lost has been lobbed into today?

Today is where victory lives. Today is where fingers meet fur, and human eyes meet peridots, and song meets song in the grand rhapsody.

Today is where Lost gets loved, no matter what else does or doesn’t happen. Today is where Lost gets found out as perfect, worthy, and chosen.

Today is the entire definition of success. The finder’s fee is just all the Yesterdays.

Things are looking pretty good for Tomorrow.

But there’s work to do, poetic prophetic work in the key of calico. Lost sings, screams, scrawls sounds across the ceiling because she wants to ensure we don’t waste today fretting “failure.”

Lost will sing you songs you had forgotten you knew.

Lost will sing you forgiveness for the fumbly bumblings and frailties.

Lost will sing your own name back into your marrow, the place where every tomorrow hatches victory.

Lost will sing, whether or not we’re listening.

I don’t want to fail to join her.

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