Mullet has passed. Mullet was the color of a circus peanut and too shy to enjoy being enjoyed. Mullet’s heart misfired. Mullet’s death made eighteen people cry.

Mullet’s name was a housewarming gift from the whimsy people. Animal shelter staff gnaw comedy like a protein bar. They name cats for ill-advised haircuts. They blow cool, bawdy air on death’s feet. What they cannot outrun, they make outrageous. They weep for cats who never trusted them.

Mullet has passed, or this is what I catch myself writing. I am the shelter’s fundraiser. I am paid to ensure we can afford insulin, kibble, and the whimsy people’s payroll.

I am not paid to do my actual job. I am the shelter’s narrator. I ask the world to uncross its arms. I ask the cats to break me off a bite of the divine, just enough to explain why this all matters.

I am the shelter’s chaplain. I ask for money, and people I will meet answer in dollars and Psalms. They hide between the sunflowers on their checks and write me ten-paragraph emails. They feel around for ears that will not fold. They tell me about their cats’ lymphoma. They tell me about the gout that burns their feet. They tell me about husbands. I pebble my calendar with sad people so I will not forget. I check in on a half-dozen before my coffee.

Mullet has passed, and dozens weep before the day is done. Mullet lived at the top of a starboard ramp, waiting for night to fall so all the people would leave. Mullet lived a second life on the shelter blog, where cats are jaunty and brave and, actually, people.

I am the shelter’s simpleton. I write thousand-word meditations on the word “irrevocable” without using it a single time. People in other time zones call to confirm that they are Mullet. They feel seen because people in New Jersey did not look away from a cat who did not like them. They can face their day because a cat the color of a circus peanut did not need to earn love. The uninterrupted adoration of Mullet ships daily bread across the country.

Mullet has passed, and it is my job to break the news. Distant prairies will burn with grief that is real. I catch myself never using the word “away.” Mullet has passed. He has made it. He has progressed to the next level. Mullet has passed, as though we were talking about Advanced Placement Physics rather than a cardiac event.

I am the shelter’s seminarian, but strictly of the first-year variety. I am excited. I am wearisome. I have yet to be tempered by higher-level caution. I carry a metal detector for buried resurrections. You do not want me to pray at Thanksgiving. The stuffing will go cold before I finish name-dropping prophets.

In the animal shelter, there are no minor prophets. I trip over parables on my way to the coffee pot. There is ludicrous enthusiasm for the hissing and ungrateful. A cat can be honest enough to communicate with rage-diarrhea. A person can still love him the best. A person can have resentment removed while she sleeps and wake to find whimsy standing on its own feet beside her. This is flesh of her flesh and bone of her bones.

Mullet has passed, and we will bury him in the Memorial Garden. The stray became a child. He has already had one resurrection. I will not use the word. Words usually fail. “Whimsy” sounds as light as a single whisker. You will find it three days later where the sunlight hits.

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Angela Townsend is the Development Director at Tabby’s Place: a Cat Sanctuary. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, Paris Lit Up, The Penn Review, The Razor, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and The Westchester Review, among others. She is a Best Spiritual Literature nominee. Angie has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 33 years, laughs with her poet mother every morning, and loves life affectionately. She lives just outside Philadelphia with two shaggy comets disguised as cats.