If you want to watch the badminton quarterfinals, you will have to set your alarm for 3am.
If you are passionate about pentathlon, you understand your event will not make prime time.
But if you are a Tabby’s Place cat, you are too good of a sport to care if you are a popular sport.
If you are a Tabby’s Place cat, you exist in an eternal Opening Ceremony. The big event is Beginning. We are the sanctuary for cats from hopeless situations, a perpetual pole vault over “impossible.”
Although our cats would not mind a song from Celine Dion or commentary from the venerable Snoop Dogg, they pursue a different podium.
The cats from hopeless situations are here to redeem the sports in hopeless situations.
Amaryllis admires Artistic Gymnastics, truly she does. But it saddens every speckle of her Snickers-colored coat to see Rhythmic Gymnastics relegated to the 4am time slot. Have you seen it? This is the sport in which human beings chase wand toys. With grace, skill, and splendorous streamers in their hands, Earth’s finest athletes prove themselves to be least 49% feline.
Amaryllis applauds them in hot pursuit of her own ribbons. She is missing a leg. She is growing more golden. She is not chasing medals. She is cherishing flight. She is the one to beat in the sport of being alive.
On the other side of the Community Room door, Stewart savors Rhythmic Gymnastics, too. Stewart is pure rhythm without a full cerebellum.
He was exposed to distemper in the womb, but he has since been exposed to arms that hug, bumblebees on strings, and the entire Flashdance soundtrack. (I can neither confirm nor deny my personal complicity in the latter.)
His head wobbles, but his heart is steady. He tumbles over in a somersault of the soul. He hopes you are watching, but his mirth does not depend on any force on earth.
Ten feet away, Hips outruns his own paws practicing Pentathlon. He failed to convince the International Olympic Committee to recognize his other sports, Rhinoceros Rampage and Systematically Exasperating Every Elderly Cat In The Lobby. (He even presented a focus group, consisting of Prescott, to prove that the latter would get higher ratings than Handball. Alas.)
So the tailless, thunderous Volleyball of the Lobby chooses the sport that is more sports than other sorts. Why shoot a hoop or row a boat when you can do five things with panache? Hips does not mind if you get up to use the litter box while his event is on. He will continue to do the five things he does best, for no goal other than his personal best.
(And, no, those five things do not happen to be Fencing, Freestyle Swimming, equestrian Show Jumping, Pistol shooting, and Cross Country Running. Hips says those things are rad, but not as rad as Thunderous Snoring, Calorie Consolidation, Gravity Mockery, Enfolding Necks Like Hairy Elbow Macaroni, and Prescott-Pestering.
NBC says there is a cat in Luxembourg who might give Hips a run for his money, but I’d like to see him try.
Wait a second. I have just been asked to pause this Olympic broadcast to inform you that Maurice is “the pommel horse guy of Tabby’s Place.” I have no further details at this time.
Then we have Rori, who regrets that Sport Climbing never caught on. She regrets this, but then she remembers that her event is Sport Climbing Into Objects. The Olympics celebrate physical feats, but Rori is after nothing less than metaphysical gold.
Rori is out to prove that walls and borders are balderdash. Rori is out to prove that a regulation-sized cat can fit into boxes too small for gerbils. By the 2028 Olympics, Rori is expected to fit inside a juice box. Next stop: ring box. Rori does not need gold. Rori is the diamond. Rori does not need an audience. Rori already says “I do!” to Rori, hourly.
This may not be her first Games, but no one should underestimate multi-medalist Fergie. She is five Olympic rings in one perfectly round feline. She is a soul sister to the 61-year-old table tennis phenom. She is Rugby with whiskers. She will not tell you how she lost three fifths of her ear, only that it was worth it. She will not tell you what happened to the rest of her team, only that it is irrelevant.
She is rough and tumble and hearty as a Grape Nut. She will head bonk you hard enough that you will bounce across the Atlantic and bank off Greenland like a human pinball. She will sort out your sadness with her sweetness until you are just rough and tumble enough to get back in the game yourself.
And then, there is our team’s torchbearer.
You can be in the Paris Olympics without being in Paris. You can be a Tabby’s Place cat without being at Tabby’s Place. Just like the surfers waving from Tahiti, Shakira is shining a few miles from the main stadium.
Nestled in the home of a gifted foster family, our gentle grey wahine gave birth to four groovy grommets. But before you could say “instant cast of a Point Break sequel?”, word came down that an amateur athlete was in danger. Camilla, was found just a few hours old, alone. Her mother had her own race to run. Camilla was running out of time.
Shakira said, “hang ten!”
When your heart is solid gold, there is always room for one more. Camilla wobbled onto the podium of Shakira’s belly. Her brand new mother and brothers sang her anthem.
If you’ve ever felt uncoordinated or odd, it’s your anthem, too.
It’s the song of another hopeless situation left in the dust.
It’s the paean of the promise that you need not achieve to be adored.
It’s the music we all felt under our ribs or between our tabby stripes when ten thousand athletes, from every worn and warring corner of the globe, sailed down the Seine, the whole world facing in one direction for one moment.
It’s the main event.
It will not be televised.
This just in: I have confirmation that Maurice is, indeed, the pommel horse guy. Maurice and the pommel horse guy have not been seen in the same room at the same time. That is all the proof we need.
Around here, we have everything we need. Let the Games begin, and begin, and begin again.