Virtute has a secret. I’m not supposed to share this secret and I feel bad that I am going to post this anyway, but sometimes Virtute can be far too humble. Each day, during the mid afternoon, Virtute takes flight. I’m not talking about wearing Air Jordan shoes and attaining significant vertical before a slam dunk, I’m talking about flying. He takes flight. He springs into the air and just proceeds to float there for an inordinate amount of time until finally gravity proves too strong and he comes back to earth. Many people believe this is a myth, but a few of us have seen it with our own eyes.
I realize cats cannot fly, but maybe they can?
Here’s the thing. I’ve asked Virtute about this on a number of occasions and he’s always been very reticent to discuss it. But last week I must have caught him in a particularly sharing mood because when I asked him, “How is it that you can fly?”, he shifted nervously and instead of scampering away he decided to respond to my question. “I fly because…because I believe I can fly.” This was all starting to sound like a bad R.Kelly song, but before I could get my jab in, he continued. “And I practice. I practice and I believe and then I let myself go. Most of the time I hit the ground pretty hard, but what are 9 lives for if you don’t use them all, right? Anyhow, a very very very long time ago – I’m talking millions if not billions of years ago our ancestors in the water wanted to reach the sky and the land. They were probably curious, maybe they feared for their existence, maybe they wished for the impossible, but there came a time when swimming wasn’t enough. They believed that life could exist outside of water and so they practiced and practiced and practiced. And slowly, over millions of years, they willed themselves to explore the skies – and they flew.”
I am somewhat aware of evolutionary theory, although all of this seemed a bit haphazard, but I indulged him – you or your species haven’t had millions of years of practice, how come you can fly? He seemed hurt. He replied, “You choose to stand sixty feet from another human on a hill throwing a ball at extreme velocities at you and swing a bat and hit the ball. That’s pretty improbable. I realize that the success rate of doing this is quite low. But you will yourself to do it for pleasure or pain or possibly for spiritual fulfillment. You practice and then you let yourself go, you practice surrender. I do the same thing. Maybe it’s not recognized as such, but I believe in the improbable. We should all believe in the improbable. But we should always practice. It helps to be prepared.”
And with a yelp and a loud meow, he pounced in the air, hanging for longer than usual before falling back to the ground satisfied with himself.
diaries of a cat named virtute 