I might get a kitten. Maybe two. Wait, let me back up…

It’s 100 degrees, and if I can just keep my garden alive and put this issue together, I’ll call the day a success. These days are so hard for me as a gardener. It’s right up there with the days I have to decide which seedlings I have to thin out. Some plants are just not going to make it under this heat dome, and I only have so much time to haul extra water around. 

Am I really in charge of deciding which of these organisms get to live or die? There’s a whole decision tree in my head about which beds to give extra water to first. All I can say is, I’m doing my best, and…well, at least plants scream in silence.

Which brings me back to the kittens. Last week, my father-in-law rescued the tiniest baby cats trying to cross a road, and my friend Laura volunteered to nurse them. There is no way those cats would have survived a heat dome without their mama cat.

Who else would have stopped and saved these kittens? They were so small, they needed formula feedings in the middle of the night. They couldn’t even poop and pee without stimulation. Yes, that’s a thing. No, I didn’t know about it until Laura told me.

“How does that work in the wild?” I asked her.

“I think the mama cat eats it to keep it from attracting predators.” Yo, nature! 

Also, if this isn’t proof that she’s a certified saint, I don’t know what is. She is divine for feeding these kitties through the night. My father-in-law is divine for rescuing them in the first place. And all of this makes me feel ever so slightly divine for trying to save as many plants as I can.

The theme for this issue is “what is sacred?” If we ascribe to the idea that we are all capable of a certain level of divinity, the answer to “what is sacred” is anything we choose to cherish and save.

As we know, it’s possible those in the business of salvation—like the goldfish trader in Jason Pearce’s story “A Concise History of the Goldfish Trade”—are only there to further their own cause. Jacob Baugher’s “Recitations” is a sci-fi take on the concept of sending “thoughts and prayers” to those suffering from catastrophes, complete with catechistic verse, and I’m sorry if our lived experience is a spoiler for how well that goes.

It’s possible there will be a cost to salvation efforts. In “The Sacred, the Sacrificial,” Kel Coleman explores the cost of using magic to save a forest. And in S.L. Harris’ “The Harrowing of Hell (Third Circle, Sausage Counter, Contracts Office),” the protagonist faces dire consequences if he’s caught stealing a soul back from Hell.

It’s also possible that our efforts will fail. The protagonist in “To Ashes” by Emlyn Meredith Dornemann wants to save their partner. The protagonist in “My flesh, my beating heart, a willing meal that refuses to remember the danger of being eaten” by Deanna J. Valdez wants to save herself. The plot of these stories hinges on whether they can succeed.

The source of our own personal divinity is so often mired with baggage. But even through self-doubt, many of us are choosing to cherish—something, someone, each other. If one half of the metaphor is these helpless kittens or these thirsty plants, what does the other half mean for your community or culture or country?

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Ⓒ Rebecca Halsey