It’s all so simple. Elementary, really.

Just death itself, defeated by love.

Just Farley, fully alive.

What’s that you say? It sounds complicated?

Well, I suppose you’re right, from a certain perspective. It’s not as though Farley just strutted down the hallway, leaving the room labeled “Horrid, Hopeless Happenings” for the one that said “Life, Love, and Liverwurst.”

It was a smidge more involved than that.

Alright, so the case was complex.

Sherlock Holmes declined it, and all the snappy people on all the Law and Orders said it was over their heads. The little black cat needed a smarter sleuth.

He also needed oxygen. Immediately.

When you are in the shape Farley was in, you do not have time to contemplate quantum theory or the relative merits of chicken nuggets vs. chicken fingers. Your world shrinks to the size of one breath — GASP — and then the next — GASP — and then the — oh, goodness, will there be another one?

Animal Control picked up the desperate cat, but Farley’s odds were tumbling down.

There was a time when he was as sleek and laughing as an otter. But now, his chest surged with nearly a cup of fluid. Bacterial and parasitic infections dueled cruelly in his lungs.

The fancy diagnosis is pyothorax. The frank truth is that Farley was dying.

The terrible simplicity of the story was almost its end. But there is nothing more basic than a new beginning.

Why, it’s elementary, my dear. All you need is impossible hope and unconditional love.

It just so happens those are the two main ingredients of the Linda Fund.

The Linda Fund is Tabby’s Place’s secret weapon against supervillains with names like “pyothorax.” The Linda Fund is your generosity, racing down the highway with Farley in your arms. The Linda Fund was the only hope for the one and only Farley.

And that is why it’s all so simple.

Farley was not five cats. Farley was not fifty cats. Farley was not some faceless phenomenon of “cats in need.”

Farley was the one cat who needed us, in the one and only moment that mattered. Farley was the newest member of our family, fighting hard as his little body bellowed, “no.”

The Linda Fund cracks the case on “yes.”

Farley’s surgeon warned us: the situation was critical. A few more hours would have been too late.

Our little otter started purring before he had any business expecting to live.

He would need all that fearsome fluid flushed from his chest, as well as chest tubes and intensive care.

Farley’s care would be costly. Did we need to think about this?

A silly question, when it is all so elementary.

The Linda Fund means there is no question. If a cat is suffering, love knows no limit. If a cat is lingering at death’s door, love breaks it down from the inside out.

Cats are better at simplicity than we are. Farley just kept purring in advance.

He offered his affection to the emergency room staff, just in case they were having a worse day than he was.

Astonished, the surgeon watched as Farley unfurled in a sunbeam, wriggling behind the bars of his hospital cage.

It was all so simple.

Farley had the ingredients. Farley had the Linda Fund.

And today, Farley has no memory of Hopeless Horrid Happenings, because he is the foremost frolicker in his forever home.

You made this possible.

You carried the cats to the most ambitious, generous Linda Fund Matching Challenge goal in Tabby’s Place history.

You gave, and you gave, and you gave. You showed the cats the meaning of love. The world out there could study your compassion for a thousand years and never reach the end of it.

But really, it’s all so simple.

Just the next Farley, fully alive.

Thank you, Tabby’s Place family, from the depths of our hearts.

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