You may have heard the unfortunate incident of the Three Little Pigs.

Apparently the only fairy tale sponsored by Home Depot, the story details what happens when swine choose inferior building materials. Unexpected guests drop by, and the only thing on hand to serve them is a BLT.

The moral of the story: if you are not prepared to host big, bad individuals, you had better buy bricks.

Or, you could just go with one sturdy Cinderblock.

Cinderblock makes Buckingham Palace look like a granny cottage. The Empire State Building is a mere garden shed in his shadow.

But Cinderblock is not sure what to do with all his majesty.

He did not ask to be so big. He looks as though he has gotten lost in a long hallway, knocking meekly on doors until he finds his own room. He does not see a fortress in a mirror, just a grey bungalow, or maybe a nice RV with glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.

When heartache huffs and puffs your life down, it feels safer to stay small.

Cinderblock knows all about that. In an overcrowded colony, he felt as squished as the Sausage of Sadness (one of Denny’s less popular entrees). He grew dangerously overweight, padding his broken heart (and arteries) with protective insulation.

This is how a twenty-one-pound colossus becomes convinced he is a tadpole.

Cinderblock did not ask to be strong, either. His nose is as pink as any piglet, and he sniffs the air to be sure there is no whiff of wolves. Just to be safe, let’s make sure there are no Shih Tzus or gerbils around, either. (You never know when you might meet a gerbil who has seen Roadhouse three times and wants to practice his favorite scenes on a certain grey cat.)

When you think you are a tiny, teetering kitten, no one can convince you otherwise. Believe me, we have tried. We offer Cinderblock life-sized diagrams of elk, yak, and woolly mammoths to prove that he is the largest land mammal. We caulk his concerns with unconditional love. We promise to defend him from all predators, pugilists, and plant-based pepperonis.

But we are powerless to make him see his own size.

So he will just have to live inside this fairy tale until he learns it is true.

Fortunately, Cinderblock is working with sturdy materials.

He has the Tabby’s Place veterinary team, titanium healers with velvet hearts. Gentle as lambs, they have never lost a cat to the wolves of his own fear. They are coaxing him to health, adding new stories to his building.

He has our selfless staff, world-class at coaxing cats into their full grandeur. Chin skritches and forehead kisses add giggly gargoyles and flying buttresses to Cinderblock’s cathedral. Day by day, his bells ring a little louder.

He has volunteers, or at least that is what we call them, although they are actually all artisans.

Like stonemasons, they shore up the cracks in Cinderblock’s confidence with the putty of patience. Like embroiderers, they stitch his name into their own hearts.

Then there is the angel who shall remain anonymous, except to say that her name is Karen and she is built from one hundred percent love. Karen scours the Earth for fabrics, amassing a kaleidoscope of “I love yous.” She stuffs them with catnip that can only be described as nuclear. She sews into the night, making pillows by the hundreds for all the cats of Tabby’s Place.

She reserves the best for the best boy on the block.

He has no reason to ever play small again.

And he has all the time he needs to lean into love. When you have watched walls fall, it’s hard to believe anything is sturdy. When you have had to be strong, it takes time to let someone else take over.

Cinderblock is made from the best materials. And, brick by brick, he is making himself at home.

Breaking news: Cinderblock is making himself even more at home … today. That’s right: as you read these words, our bountiful boy is en route to his adoptive home! (Yes, they do make a carrier large enough for his magnificence!)

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