Cats pick up language more quickly than we do.
The average kitten can understand metaphor, allegory, and knock-knock jokes in English, Swahili, and Klingon before they are even the size of a granola bar.
But among all fluent felines and tabby translators, there is a rare prodigy.
Behold Odessa, the neon communicator.
It starts before you fully open the door to Suite E.
You may think you are “visiting cats.” But as you turn the handle, you are turning potential energy into hyperkinetic affection. You are stepping from a world of taxes and broccoli to a planet of poetry.
All at once, the ambient noise of agendas and anxiety fades to static.
She is speaking.
She is smiling directly into your eyes. She is ecstatic that, at last, you have arrived.
She is moving so quickly, you are not sure if she is an electrified Twizzler or an unusually orange tabby.
And just as you realize that she is both, Odessa makes her assessment of your arrival: “OH!”
OH! You are here.
Your coming was foretold. Your blue jeans are precisely the blue jeans in need of head-bonks from a red cat who already loves you from your kneecaps to your neuroses. What was your name again? Wow! That is the most beautiful name Odessa has ever heard in any language.
OH! You have survived many things to reach this day, you and Odessa.
Do you know what a wonder that is? You are here, and Odessa is here, and it all could have been otherwise.
Odessa was a brittle kitten in the 2020 Beirut port blast. You have been a brittle kitten, too — in waiting rooms, and watching the news, and on starless nights that nobody knows about.
But all those ragged threads raveled into today, with a red cat dancing around your shins.
OH! You are together, you and Odessa. Do you know there is no word large enough for “together,” not even in Elvish?
Odessa sprints spiral galaxies around your ankles, trusting you to translate them into exclamation points.
You are together because mercy-people bore Odessa over the Atlantic in 2025, as she was dying of feline infectious peritonitis (FIP).
You are together because Odessa fell ill in the era of a cure, and the embrace of Tabby’s Place.
You are together because mercy-people bore you over losses you thought would liquefy you, and breakups that shook your foundations, and also that bad pixie cut in 1999.
You are together, you and Odessa.
OH! You are safe, you and Odessa. Human language gets “safe” all wrong. “Safe” is not boring. “Safe” is not small.
“Safe” is the size of a skinny red cat and a you-sized you, here in this moment where all is well.
Odessa’s moonstone eyes marvel at you. She has lived secret headlines of hurt. But she became a Tabby’s Place cat, and nothing can ever hurt her again.
She knows you’re harboring some headlines, too. But you have come to this place, and this paprika-striped cat.
The story gets better. Odessa would like every newspaper from New Jersey to Yemen to run the headline, “ODESSA AND THIS PERSON PERSEVERE!”
OH! You are speaking the same language now, you and Odessa.
She still has stubborn liver issues. She will need tender care, tenacious reassurance, and an adopter okay with uncertainty.*
You still have scars, stomach aches, and frizzy bangs that stick up like fried onions.
Fret not. “Perfect” is hollow in every language from Lebanon to Suite E.
Love spans gaps, seas, and what-may-be’s.
OH! Go tell the others.
Odessa has gone on to the adoptive home of her dreams … and the greatest tales are yet to be told.
*That wondrous person came, and Odessa thrives in their home. OH! What miracles happen when love speaks!