By Jean Ponzi
This is our cat friend Lulu, in one word.
She is also long, brown-striped, hazel-eyed, luxuriously furry, loose and drapey, funny, fast, and wide when she lays down. Bright heart of Lulu’s nature is Loveliness, pure and simple.
Lulu is living, purring proof that “Beauty Is as Beauty Does.”
I didn’t get how fine this is, when we met just last year. I was in mourning for Yahzi, our strong, yellow longtime cat, who was both my special friend and Worthy Opponent. I was fixed on Feistiness.
Yahzi was “Full of It.” She kept tabs on our neighbors, tail-high visitor to their homes. She ruled bunny population dynamics, Zoom-bombed my pandemic talks (star Chat topic), and slept on me, not just on our bed. Anytime I, innately self-involved, ignored her requests for attention, she nipped me. Calling her into the house each night, she leaped to my shoulder and relished the ride. Yahzi, zippy friend of a lifetime, slipped from this life with our tender pets upon her, last July.
A cat-lonely month passed.
On husband Dale’s mid-August birthday, he sat cruising the net over breakfast.
“What are you looking up?” I asked, breezing by. My hearing is eroded but his barely audible four-letter reply got my feelings roaring.
“Cats . . . Cats? CATS!!!”
Turns out we had both been daily browsing Humane Society adoption pix. That morning, an individual with feathery ear tufts appeared. To the car!
In the Get-Acquainted Room, this long-haired brown cat jumped right up to our laps. Dale beamed, but I could barely feel her. I was bawling. I sorely missed cat-friendship, but how could I trust choosing a new friend when I had just lost such a one? Would this new cat bug me, keep me honest? Could she be funny? She seemed so opulent: all coat, no nips.
After much sobbing dither, the (exceptionally) patient Humane Society person cheered when we BOTH said YES to this cat. She hustled off to paperwork.
Still sniveling, at the checkout counter, I reneged. “I need another day to decide,” I wailed to the clerking volunteer. At that moment, a brown head poked out of a cardboard carrier beside this (justifiably) impatient HS person.
“That’s the kind of cat I want!” I blubbered.
“Lady,” the volunteer huffed, “that’s your cat.”
Merriam Webster defines Loveliness as a rich, complex exchange: Contributing love through moral or ideal worth. Delightful for beauty, harmony, or grace. Attractive. Another kind of push and pull, on its own four-footing.
Being an assertive type, I felt akin to Yahzi. Also, being one culturally raised to not think too highly of oneself in the Physical Assets Dept., I was skeptical of someone lovely.
I cherished a challenge from a friend who arched her trim orange back and stood up to me. Now a long stretch of deep brown affinity encourages me to enjoy, to relax, to be kind. Now I get to appreciate Loveliness curling – and springing! – around our place, lounging on Dale’s laptop arm, flipping for a tummy pet. Evolving me as a friend.
Lulu Fun Fact: Loveliness is substantial. Nothing fluffy here, folks.
Jean Ponzi explores eco-logical relating in her Earthworms podcast conversations from KDHX.org, and through her work for the EarthWays Center of Missouri Botanical Garden.