A headline catches your eye and quickens your heart. You want to read the whole story.
You click. Your heart sinks. You can’t even peek at a paragraph, because you’re not a subscriber.
You’ve just hit what’s called “a paywall,” and it’s happened to all of us.
Well, maybe not all of us.
Gallium was not a paying member of the Fairytale Federation. Sleek and silver as a seal pup, she’d spent most of her youth slip-sliding between rocks and hard places. Life was salty and uncertain in her crowded outdoor colony. Sickness swirled, and little was certain.
By the time we met her, Gallium’s fear was elemental. She came to us in last summer’s daring 138-cat colony rescue. She was just one daunted daughter in a freewheeling family of worried silver cats. Her eyes watered with worry.
You do not simply hopscotch from bare survival to faith in happy endings. But we named her for the soft, silvery metal used in mirrors and telescopes, and we told her, “you’ll see.”
When your life story has been so shaky that you can’t make sense of one sentence, it’s hard to subscribe to promises from strangers. You can’t be sure their sunny voices will not suddenly storm, even if they do blink at you slowly and leave little molehills of meats and treats. Gallium was so used to turbulence, she could not bring herself to land in our love.
But when the crisis came, she could not bring herself to safety.
Without warning, Gallium’s graceful legs gave way. There was weird wobbling, then worse. Over twenty-four hours, her ataxia became acute, until she was unable to walk at all. A hurricane of fear howled in her eyes.
It’s scary enough to feel sick. But when the only people who can help you are the ones you’ve run away from, can you really expect them to race to your side?
Maybe not in the “normal” news.
But Tabby’s Place has no paywall.
Membership is free in the fellowship of the fragile. Gallium got a lifetime subscription the day she arrived. 
Our team raced her to the emergency hospital, making sure the doctors knew: this is not “a shelter cat.” This is a cherished cat. This cat has a family, from her colony kin to the hundreds of staff, volunteers, and donors who adore her. That’s a-d-o-r-e. Please put that at the top of her record, with exclamation points.
Please do whatever she needs, whatever the cost.
There was no time for Gallium to earn another star in her storybook. You cannot put a price on hope against hope. Precious and perfect, with no need to prove a thing, Gallium found grace…and a chance at survival.
A terribly faint chance.
The doctors determined that an ear infection had come on like a locomotive, barrelling into Gallium’s beautiful brain. The result was an abscess, and the future was too cloudy to call.
But Gallium was a cat with a name and a family. Somewhere, in the bravest room of her heart, she found reason to live…and it looked a lot like all those human goofballs who loved her for free. (That’s us.)
She found her feet. She steadied her soul. She recovered at the supersonic speed of one who wants to come home.
If the word “paywall” has one perfect opposite, it is “home.” Home is the place where you dare not try to buy what no one can afford. You cannot beg, barter, or steal what you will never lose.
All you can contribute is your empty paws.
Gallium’s paws are overflowing today, as she juggles jingle balls and treats shaped like the stars in her eyes. She will get to read the full story, and to write the best chapters in her own voice.
There is no paywall at Tabby’s Place, only a family. If you have ever donated before, you are the power of love against the “paywall.” You are the song of survival and the story of hope.
You are the element of grace, and Gallium is your girl.