1
Likely, unless you're also a delver
in forgotten old books, you've never
heard of Tommy the swimming cat.
Edwin Way Teale, the naturalist,
photographed him in the Forties.
Tommy's eight-year-old friend, Mervin,
taught him as a kitten to swim increasing distances
for the reward of a freshly-dug clam.
Teale's photo shows Tommy, only his head
above the water of Long Island Sound, 
and the boy also only a floating head,
an excellent happiness between them.

    2
A humane society in New York
chose to award the now-famous aquatic feline
an "Outstanding Cat of the Year" medal,
but the night before the gray and brown tabby
could be taken to Broadway,
a vicious dog caught him,
and that was the end of Tommy's story.

    3
The swimming cat whose picture in a long-
out-of-print book charms us would, in any case,
be long gone.  And Tommy was never
in any way extraordinary to himself,
only a cat who happened to be able
to outswim dogs and humans and
who relished a fresh clam when he could get one.
The medal would have meant nothing to him,
though the boy -- you can imagine --
was heartbroken.

    4
This, in miniature, is the story 
of all life, of each of us,
what happiness we find in living
mocked, it would appear,
by the grim jaws of the dog.

    5
Surely we're not to judge the worth
of the story only by its ending?

    6
Sometimes I think happiness isn't
personal at all, but a substance we breathe
like air, breathe in and breathe out.

I believe the boy's happiness and the cat's
still have some being in the photos of them,
companions adventuring in a young world.

I believe, too, that this happiness can enter 
anyone unexpectedly and inexplicably,
and that where it comes from or goes to

matters less than that it comes, and that
it's bigger than us, and that it breathes us
in and out of itself for the glory of existence.