Ain’t No Party Like a Sanctuary Party
Angela Townsend
The rave is not limited to the club. The Holy Ghost does not sit with hands folded in the pew. There are unregistered hootenannies far from any honky-tonk. If it is ecstasy you seek, please report to the cat sanctuary.
You will not be turned away if you show up in sweat shorts or disarray. You will not be turned away if you have never heard of a “cat sanctuary.” The cat sanctuary is twelve thousand square feet purpose-built for the bewildered. The cat sanctuary is an orphanage for tails too bent for the municipal shelter. The cat sanctuary has no cages or couth.
Nobody plans to come to the cat sanctuary. The cats arrive gnashing their teeth and brandishing shivs at the ends of their hands. They do not know that the cat sanctuary is the foxhole that will have them. They do not know how to wear a name. The sleeves are too long, and their shivs get stuck. They will learn. They will accept crispy stars that taste like the sea. They will retract their umbrage. Only love can call you “Buttermuffin” or “Steve.” The ends are where God makes mischief.
Nobody plans to come to the cat sanctuary. There are four hundred volunteers. They just needed a basement to wait out the tornado, but the door blew shut behind them. The teenagers had community service requirements. The people out of wine had community service requirements. The elderly were bored with orchids and canasta. The staff all set out to be something else. I went to divinity school so I could legally handle The Love Of God. God laughed so hard, my compass went all ridiculous, and now I am at the cat sanctuary too.
Whenever times get tight, the cat sanctuary has an “open house.” The open house has many rooms. People come because they are out running errands. People come because they heard we have one cat who looks like John Goodman. People come because they heard the one-eyed calico Penelope can tell their fortune. People come because they never heard of a cat sanctuary. People come because it has been a few days since anyone said their names.
It is imperative that we fill the rooms of the “open house.” The cats are still not convinced that there is such a thing as a cat sanctuary. That work begins again daily. The cats need people to cup their cheeks like a chalice. The cats need people to drag bags of meat nuggets all the way across the parking lot. The staff slinks down alleys in search of people. It is not an “open house” until we have veterinarians and veterans and some bayou people we found outside town. It is good for cats’ immune systems to be exposed.
It is good for people to be exposed. At the “open house,” you will meet the people who canceled your vote and the people who refried your beans and the people who no one saw coming, and no one will see leaving, but everyone knows was there. They were there.
You will meet notables who live at The Remington, and youths with lasers in both hands. You will meet a woman who made a fortune selling tweezers, and a man tall as scaffolding lying fetal on the floor. You will hear meemaws pontificate and catch attorneys shoving ten complimentary brownies in their pockets. You will have unlimited access to the “kitten room.” There is no deed good enough to earn access to the “kitten room.” You will hold a warm animal smaller than a cheeseburger, with eyes that pierce the expanse.
You will be interrogated by cats who still can’t believe any of this is happening. Someone will put out more brownies. You will spoon-feed carnivores without fear. You will leave with your hair blown back as though you were in a wind tunnel. Nobody plans to come to the cat sanctuary. You can’t leave until you sign the guest book.
Angela Townsend works for a cat sanctuary. She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the 2024 winner of West Trade Review’s 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Blackbird, Five Points, Indiana Review, The Iowa Review, Meridian, Pleiades, SmokeLong Quarterly, Trampset, Witness, and World Literature Today, among others. She graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and Vassar College.
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