Severe Weather Outlook: Take Immediate Action
Multiple confirmed miracles in the vicinity.
Widespread outbreak of sustained hope is imminent.
It is too late to secure your pessimism and patio furniture.
Prepare for a total loss of gloom.
It’s easy to stay dry and cynical as long as you keep your eyes tightly shut.
In the echo chambers of our heads, fear fixates on every rumble of evidence. Small slights mean we are unworthy. Wars overseas or under our roofs mean love has limits. The cancellation of our favorite show means all good things come to an end.
It’s easy to spiral, so long as we don’t peek out through our eyelashes.
But crack those worried windows, and despair is in immediate danger.
Cynicism is not safe if it looks down, for it risks seeing Peabody. He is sunshine swathed in silk, the paralyzed cat in perpetual motion. Being struck by a car was the enlightening bolt that hurled him into happiness. In an alternate universe, he would still be able to walk, but he would plod alone down a St. Louis highway.
But in this rugged, sacred world, his back legs drag between the ankles of angels in blue jeans. Losing everything led him to Tabby’s Place, where he galloped among the broken and beautiful (feline and otherwise).
He became best friends with the braggadocious Berry, the spina bifida survivor and poet laureate of shenanigans.
He became best friends with humanity, one human at a time, one pair of calves at a time, snuggling shins before asking names.
He became best friends with his own life, which is the best way to keep your eyes open.
Still, some squinted at Peabody. It was all well and good that he was safe at Tabby’s Place, but surely such a cat is unadoptable? It is hard to break up with the blues, even when a black-and-white cat is twisting technicolor tornadoes of love around your legs.
But it is harder to stay discouraged when miracles run faster than we do.
Wonders are as wry as the weather, and more difficult to predict. So when Peabody’s person walked into our Lobby, the forecast kept its secrets. But, sure as the rainbow that laughs across dishwater skies, “forever” split the script of “the way the world works.” The broken cat was crowned and chosen. To his adopter’s eyes, Peabody’s wobblings and bobblings were a beautiful ballet.
Imperfection is essential for unconditional love.
Inspiration is invincible if we will only receive it.
So there is no safe basement in looking down. There is always danger in gazing up, where clouds crack smiles and Tabby’s Place cats sprawl like nebulas on ramps that lead to sunrooms.
But discouragement may think it is safe so long as it keeps its eyes fixed straight ahead. After all, isn’t that where the “real world” breaks the news that life is not all cheese and chocolate? There are disappointments out there, and diagnoses, and all the humid hurts we think will be easier if we never hope too hard.
But hopelessness will hit hazards anywhere it looks. The midst and the middle are nowhere to hide from hope. The mess and the muddle are mercy’s favorite weather. And Magda‘s, too.
Feral-born Magda did not choose Tabby’s Place. She did not choose it the day she came, wild-eyed and mourning the thorny life she knew. She did not choose it in the many months that followed, grim as drizzle no matter how many times we told her, in Psalms and poultry, that love was her new address.
She did not choose it, no matter how many times we chose her.
She chose the cubbies at eye-level, the better to keep tabs on the dunderheads and thunderclouds who could not stay away. We came with wand toys and dishes of fishes. We came with no expectations. We wanted only that she should feel safe here.
But miracles are greedier than we are.
Major meteorological events begin with small swirls in tidepools, a thousand miles from our sight. No grand ambitions drove Magda’s volunteers. Love was the full size of their intent.
Week after week, they played with her. Month after month, they made much of her. Year after year, her stony sky softened.
Teardrop after teardrop, we are a soggy mess of celebration that Magda, “impossible” Magda, was adopted.
May our tears become the mudslide that washes away despair.
May “hopeless” blow away like kibble dust in the whirling winds of many purrs.
And may our eyes be ever open for the weather of forever.
Lest we forget! Tabby’s Place is not just sanctuary, it is also the temporary pause between everybody’s cat and one special awesome adopter’s cat! Cats from Tabby’s Place make the best family additions!