“I have heard that voice before.”

“Don’t I know that cat?”

“It can’t be…”

It can’t.

Your ears do not deceive you. An ancient music has returned to the Tabby’s Place Lobby.

You struggle to describe it.

It is the marriage of harmonica and accordion. It is a mantra chanted from one lung to the other. It is a wheezy white noise machine, soothing and citric all at once.

No, that’s not quite right. It is an orange noise machine, and it is coming from that marmalade tabby.

You squint, but your lenses are tear-stained, and you cannot get them clean. It sounds like Stanley, the ginger angel with a partially paralyzed larynx. But Stanley died in 2021. You still miss him too much to talk about him, or else you will cry.

It sounds like Glenn, too, the creamsicle granddad with a partially paralyzed larynx. Every electron in Glenn’s body was made of friendship. But Glenn died in 2023. You still hear him in your heart.

You still think about them both, all the time. What were the odds that Tabby’s Place would have two cats with the same exceedingly rare condition, and they would both be bright as paprika?

What is the meaning of this melody that fills the Lobby?

The squeaky Psalm may be the same, but the face is new. It’s Jack, seventeen pounds of cinnamon sugar. Take one step in his direction, and he will long-jump the Grand Canyon to greet you. It is enough to make you wonder if “tracheal paralysis” and “angelic sweetness” are found on the same chromosome.

Yet Jack is no genetic accident, any more than disability is a tragedy. He is as precious as his predecessors. He would chortle over the coincidences, then sing a new song he wrote on the spot for you. It sounds like all his other songs, until you listen.

You know you will love him, but you don’t know Jack, not yet.

You don’t know that he believes in serendipity, not coincidence. He joins a grand heritage at Tabby’s Place. He would have loved his ancestors. But he will love in his own ways, and write his own lyrics.

As you bury your hands in his stripes, Jack offers ecstatic treasures. He expects to live. He enjoys the sound of his own oboe. He wishes they still made PT Cruisers, because he thought they were cute. He thinks you are cute. He thinks he is cute. He thinks they should call orange tabbies “marinara cats.” He thinks we should name the next three kittens “Lurlene,” “Earlene,” and “Perlene.”

He thinks he is hilarious. You start to think that, in Jack’s case, the wheezing is laughter.

Perhaps Stanley’s paralyzed larynx was a love letter factory, and Glenn’s generated Psalms. Jack is unprecedented. Jack believes in presence, not precedents. Jack also believes in presents, which brings him back to marinara.

But most of all, Jack believes in bringing you back to this moment.

This is the only place where the reception is clear, and static surrenders to song. Jack does not know this moment yet, but it’s going to introduce him to its best friends. Since you are now Jack’s best friend, Jack’s moments want to get to know you, too.

Listen long enough, and you will hear Stanley and Glenn in the harmony.

There is a rowdy oom-pah band spanning heaven and earth, and no larynx or lyric is quite like another.

Join the festivities. Get to know the one and only Jack.

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