Muffin

A perfect world … what exactly is that?

We all talk about it. Politicians, philosophers, bar stool debate teams, we all say “In a perfect world …” But would we know it if we had it? Perfection is an elusive thing.

In the not so distant past, perfection meant blonde hair, blue eyes, a certain sexual orientation and one religion. Humanity decided pretty quickly that one man’s definition was not the true order of the universe. But still, we have some fairly rigid notions about how we expect things ought to be. In a perfect world, things operate a certain way.

I may have caught a glimpse of perfection today in animal rescue, and it wasn’t at all what I expected. At Kitty City, our animal education and adoption center, a new cat came in. Goodness knows, it’s hard enough to find a home for a female kitten nearing the age of first heat if all goes right. And for this cat, nothing had been going well.

I first saw her last week when a volunteer brought her to me. She was gorgeous, but many kittens are, and as Animal Control officers can tell you, they are euthanized at a rate nearing 100 felines each week in our county alone. Ugly, beautiful, healthy, not so healthy – there simply aren’t enough homes to keep up with the birth rates of unwanted kittens.

But Muffin was especially in peril. When Tammy put her down on the floor, she walked a few steps and fell down, scrambled up and took a few more strides before she fell again. I groaned with Tammy in dismay. It looked like Muffin had come too close to a tire. Her hindquarters just wouldn’t work right.

And when I felt her little hips, I was even sadder. To say she was thin would be to say those runway model icons of human perfection are chunky. I don’t know how she had enough strength to make the front legs carry her along. Tammy had found her trying to climb into a dumpster to find food. It’s a miracle that this cat had survived three months of life on the streets. She would not have lasted much longer.

I couldn’t detect an injury, so we sent Tammy and the kitten off to the vet. More than likely, I thought, they’d just euthanize her and the little life would end peacefully. After a thorough exam, Dr. Joyner suspected it was not an injury, but a neurological problem. Most likely, as a kitten and maybe even before birth, a virus or infection had impaired her development. She had delayed reactions to reflex stimulation. Her head bobbled drunkenly with tremors. But other than that, she was healthy and intelligent. She could live a normal life span.

It certainly wasn’t a perfect diagnosis or solution. For a week I struggled with the fate of this kitten. Would she ever get better? Should she be put down mercifully? With so many cats desperately seeking homes, would anybody want Muffin? Did she deserve to die just because she wasn’t perfect?

I managed to talk a few people into coming by on Saturday to see if a handicapped cat was a challenge they could take on, and Tammy brought her into Kitty City in the morning. By late afternoon, no one that I had talked with had showed up to meet her. Muffin lay motionless in the back corner of her cage, showing no interest in anyone who spoke softly to her.

And then Jeanne Murdock dropped in to say hello to all the cats, as she often does when she closes her store just up the street. Jeanne has been thinking of adopting a cat to keep her company while she throws pottery on her wheel at Little Feather and Lali. A light bulb went off in my brain. I asked her if she’d ever considered a special needs pet who would be less likely to go tearing around her displays of crystals and dreamweavers and gifts that display her personal harmony with nature.

Jeanne lifted the frail warm body to her shoulder and she and Muffin proceeded to bond as though they were created of some special clay to mold inseparably to each other. I saw Muffin’s eyes half-closed with pleasure and she sighed peacefully as she purred. I know that when I lifted Muffin, she was pleasant enough and accommodating, but her emotional switch was off. She wouldn’t look at me. With Jeanne, she never took her eyes off her new friend.

Finally Jeanne returned her to her cage and went away to think it over – and almost immediately returned to say she wanted to give Muffin the perfect home.

We are all hoping that when the frail kitten grows stronger, she can join a little team we are developing at Kitty City to show children with disabilities that love and inner strength are the most powerful forces in the universe. Her life will have more meaning than most pets and she will reach out with hope to many people.

I know her message came through loud and clear to me.

So maybe the perfect world isn’t exactly what we always thought it would be. Maybe the men aren’t always strong and the women beautiful, as Garrison Keillor says. Maybe it’s all in the eye of the beholder.

But I do know this. In a perfect world, there is a plan, an order to the universe and a harmony with nature that is love in its purest form, and it will find a way to overcome any obstacle.