25 February 2022
Gabrielle is such a brave cat that I once wrote an essay to detail her exploits against an annoying and intrusive raccoon (Mid-August 2014 Essay). I’ve continued to feel that she does deserve a cross of courage for an animal who stands her ground.
We all need heroes to look up to, especially in the face of so much human cowardice, at least in my country. I therefore fashioned a ribbon of honor to place around the neck of my fatally lovely feline. Gabrielle the Snowshoe Cat has been a real trouper during these past 4 years of moving from the homestead-house, living in a dump of a rental, and moving during the heat of summer into a newly built garage, jam-packed with boxes and furniture.
She was a quiet, calm and courageous spirit all throughout the fraudulent roller-coaster year of 2020. She continues to be a soothing sigh for me during moments when The Predicted and The Inevitable just keep happening in the world well beyond my country domicile.
Placing the ribbon of honor around the soft white neck of this Snowshoe was quite a different matter.
The past week has been extremely cold in my habitat: 20 degrees in the early morning, with high temps of perhaps 50. Around 10 a.m., Gabrielle leaves the warmth of her heated cat-bed in the mid-morning; and she goes into the sunlight. Gleamingly, she sits there, looking out upon the pine forest.
I can surmise by her squinted blue eyes that she does not understand why the mid-morning sunlight is not warming her. Soon enough, she retreats into the garage, to her Magic Towel, the heating pad in her cat bed.
This morning, Dear Husband was able to drape the Ribbon of Honor around her neck. There were about 20 victorious seconds that elapsed before she wriggle-escaped the feeling of a physical acclaim upon her skin. My Gabrielle knows very well, in her loving heart of hearts, that she needs no ribbon of honor from me, or from anyone.
There is more valor in her little q-tip paw and more audacity in her adventurous spirit than in whatever passes for fortitude in many humans out there in the public sphere. The spineless frauds of the politico-stripe ought to have, not a ribbon strung around their necks, but ropes. Come to think of it, those cretins are hanging themselves with the ropes of their greed, gluttony and ghoulish amorality.
Those topics I do not mention to my Snowshoe, and she does not mention to me her kitty version of the wisdom of Blaise Pascal:
“The more I see of Mankind, the more I prefer my cat.”
I’ve already read the French version of that truism. I’m currently seeing it, play itself out — live — in the American one.