There are always some changes going on at Tabby’s Place. With around 150 cats onsite, and many with advanced needs, change is par for the course. Diets change, locations change, suitemates change, and sometimes the spaces themselves change.

For Marcia, the Executive-Executive Director, to whom Jonathan, the Executive Director, reports directly, one fairly recent change was the expansion of the executive office. It now includes a solarium. This is one delightful improvement for Marcia. She loves going in and out of the solarium. She loves chatting to any visitor who accompanies her. She loves posing for photos and showing off her favorite spots. She has no idea how to use the cat door. Fortunately, Marcia has a human suitemate (that would be Jonathan) and a host of other humans (that would be the rest of the staff and all of the volunteers) who will happily do her bidding.

Marcia is thrilled. But…
Oh, yes, there’s a “but.”

But…Marcia has yet another new roommate, technically only one. Phoebe is phobic of everything and everyone except maybe for Marcia. During the daytime, Phoebe hides up on the highest shelf in the room. Once the sun goes down and the humans go home, she is willing to venture to lower locations. Unfortunately, that means that Phoebe does not get to enjoy the fullness of the executive privileges that are available to her. Unfortunately for Phoebe, the addition is a solarium, not a moonarium (There should be such a thing!).

So far, it seems that Marcia is pretty much okay with having Phoebe as a roommate. What is less clear is the extent of okay that Marcia is with other recent changes. More “but.”

Once Hips was adopted, the mood changed in the lobby. For one thing, Trent started to come out of his shell more, asking for pets rather than simply tolerating them. For another, the powers that be decided to take down the gate that separated the executive office from the lobby. Colonel Peabody, Prescott, Deku, and Trent (at the least) are all happy to have more space to explore and enjoy. Marcia…well, Marcia remains skeptical of all this gladness that comes from felines that are not her.

In general, Marcia remains a skeptic.

Marcia is skeptical of human abilities as pertains to providing the proper amount of treats and the correct flavors of fish mush. She is skeptical of the quality of Colonel Peabody’s playlist whenever it is his turn to choose (Recently, it was Flashback 80s, and Marcia found that particularly exasperating because this one human – yes, ’twas I – kept singing along with highly questionable skill.). Marcia is skeptical about Prescott’s and Trent’s ability to share the other cat tree (“Other” in that it is not the one Marcia herself prefers). Marcia is skeptical of Deku’s right to exist, but she’ll tolerate him as long as he’s sleeping out of her view.

Despite the executive interlopers and two officemates, there does still remain that one remedy that breaks through all of Marcia’s skepticism and brightens the very blackness of her fur. There is that solarium. When Marcia is enjoying the solarium, everything else melts away. All existence is divine, and every note of music is angelic.

When Marcia is in the solarium, she basks and stretches.
She chatters and dances. She breathes and sighs and lets go of anything and everything that the Executive-Executive Director of the Place of Places carries on her shoulders. Marcia’s moment has come. It shows in her mood, in her moves, and in her demands to have the person-door opened for her to allow her freedom to enter and depart in the grand style she deserves.

At long last, excepting a future forever home, Marcia’s world is complete. All she needed was the small change that gave her access to a solarium and, thusly, her savored moments in the sun.

Spring is coming, so, soon, we humans will get ours too.

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