A beautiful cat lives somewhere around here. She frequently visits our backyard. With stripes and spots and stealthy movements, she behaves just like a leopard or tiger in the jungle, and I call her “Beautiful.”

Beautiful always comes from the south side of our wooded yard. Crosses through the steep middle section, behind the rhododendron, under  the bows of the cedars, languidly trailing her long tail under the hanging blackberry vines as if enjoying the scratch of the thorns.

She’s looking for bunnies.

Bunnies do occasionally browse in and around our shrubs. I’ve seen them.

But not always.

But Beautiful comes in nearly every day with the full expectation of catching one.

I remarked to myself the other day that Beautiful is a reminder of the importance of persistence and of checking back already-searched areas.

Yesterday I received a sweetly-phrased rejection from an editor to one of my literary submissions.

Of course my first reaction was disappointment, followed by the usual, “I can’t believe they didn’t want this project; it’s so good.”

Then I felt the inevitable, “Maybe I should give up writing.”

After I calmed down, I remembered Beautiful.

How she keeps coming back, again and again.

Because today might be the day that she actually catches her bunny.

So I decide to keep trying, and I thank God for reminding me that survivors—like Beautiful—only survive because they don’t give up.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll catch my bunny in the bushes.

“Patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.” (T.H. Huxley)