At life’s peak moments, classic cries split the sky:
“Holy moly!”
“Oh my stars!”
“Zoiks!”
“SHMOLDIE!”
As we crest a mighty mountain together at Tabby’s Place, I would like to nominate a new exclamation:
“Dippity!”
We are not ascending Everest. We have not conquered K2. We are not high atop the Himalayas, although now you’re getting close.
We have reached a Siamese summit that’s topped with four thousand flags.
They are as colorful as Skittles and as brave as prayer. They are tabby-dabbled and tortoiseshelled, long-tailed and snub-nosed. Their egos pierce the ozone layer. Their empathy steadies the earth’s axis. They are past and present, lost to our sight and lardy in our laps.
They are the history of Tabby’s Place, and today history hurtles skyward.
We have welcomed our four thousandth cat.
Dippity!
Serendipity can count to four thousand, but she prefers to stop at five. That’s the number of her newborns, four Siamese and a tabby, four pints of cookies-and-cream and one rocky road. How scrumptious, how very Tabby’s Place, that the “ordinary” kitten is the standout.
She’s number four thousand, you say? A turning point in feline history, is that right?
Dippity! But mama will scan the headlines later. For now, she’s setting up base camp. A mewling mountain of hunger and hope climbs into her tent.
Tabby’s Place can count to four thousand, but we prefer to stop at one. That’s the number in front of us, the nursing Siamese as sweet as a sundae and as weary as frost. If Serendipity were the only cat on the mountain, it would still be worth it to have a Tabby’s Place.
We have never nuzzled numbers for numbers’ sake. Do that, and you must leave your complicated companions at the foot of the mountain. Make no mistake: saving Prescott will slow your journey. Embracing Anka will delay your rise. You will meander as gently as moss if you insist on bringing Poncey and Carrot, Olive and Lynette.
Dippity! Wildflowers and love are willing to go slow.
Serendipity knows her eyes are fancy, blue as cloudless heaven. Four of her boys inherited her porcelain face, and adopters will gallop over rocks to grab them. But Serendipity sees treasure in her plain brown tabby child. There is no prestige in being “purebred.”
There are only vestiges of miracles, flapping like prayer flags everywhere she looks.
At ocean level, her belly swung low with unborn promises. Mercy was her only way up the mountain. (Mercy is all of our only way up the mountain.) Stray but dignified, she carried kicking kittens like rucksacks. Confident as morning, she waited to be carried.
Dippity! She became the four thousandth to become the one. Made entirely of mother love, her one request was that we love her children. Made to be loved like a kitten herself, her one life became a treasury of gold.
It took twenty years to get to four thousand cats, with switchbacks and campfires, desperate diabetics and despotic bottle babies. We could have saved time if we’d skipped melty S’mores and peaky Denali. We could have raced to the top if we weren’t carrying Boobalah and Baby in our backpacks.
Four thousand is a hundred forties, a birthday cake of huddled symbolism. In the Bible, you find these forties everywhere, cake crumbs on the long trek home. Forty is temptation and trial, growing up and being gripped by grace. Forty scrapes off fear and scoffing. Forty burns without consuming you.
Dippity! A hundred forties had the nerve to believe that they belonged among the beloved. Not one cat in Tabby’s Place history has doubted her place here. Each one has been promised that she is the most important one.
Every promise gets kept, even if we get delayed and waylaid by the work of love.
Dippity! A stray Siamese is saved, and everything does and does not change. The path winds upward, curved like a smile. Who can tell how many miles we will log today, how many friends will join this fellowship before the year is over?
Who can tell Serendipity that everything is anything other than grace?
We salute you from afar, number five thousand. We love you across years, ten thousand. But forgive us if history glistens with one, and one, and one, and one.
Dippity! This is the peak. This is the moment.
All photos courtesy of our beloved Bree, who saved Ms. Dippity from beneath a shed and was rewarded with trust immeasurable: Serendipity literally birthed her boys in Bree’s lap.