Nobody makes it out of kittenhood without disappointment.
By the time your tail gets long enough to curl, you learn: life is not all pinwheels and squeeze-cheese.
There are days in spring as cold as deep December.
And there will always be some people who think you are “just a cat.”
But then, there are your people. And they make all the difference.
They are the people who see the same cloudy-eyed, smiley-faced elderly cat as other people. But while other people say, “that’s an old cat,” your people say, “that’s Spicey, and there has never been a cat like her before, and there will never be a cat like her again, so we had better adopt her.”
They are the people who perceive a star inside a smoldering pinch of tortoiseshell. While other people assume it is too late for such a kitten, your people assume nothing but the stubbornness of love. They name her Pixel, and they fan her embers back into a flame, and so she lives.
They are the people who hear our call to “Cherish the Kittens,” asking you to sacrifice your own bouquets of roses and ice cream sundaes so you can give to someone small, scared, and suffering.
While others hoard what they have, protecting themselves from a world that seems sparse and mean, your people give, and give, and give, until the universe has to expand to accommodate the goodness, and also the kittens.
You, Tabby’s Place family, are our people.
You’ve carried the kittens to the brink of the most audacious, astonishing, life-saving goal in Tabby’s Place history. (We are within a whisker of that $200,000 goal as you read these words.)
Because of you, baby cats with broken hearts will be healed. Senior cats will be coddled like kittens. Tabby’s Place will build a Kitten Nursery, where the lost and little will lead us all back to the people we were born to be.
And maybe, just maybe, the people who say a cat is “just a cat” will eat their words when the right kitten curls up on their collarbone.
It would be a miracle … but many of those happened in April alone:
Arrived: MJ, Tia, Wednesday, Skips, Nier, Emil, Kainé, Bandit, Boeing, Pixel, Leia, Wally, Tuttie, Donnie, Evan, Tom, Rider, Kiki, Shizu, Jimmy, Jeff, Tiffany (pictured in thumbnail above), Mia, Bonk/Bump/Barkey, Frank Sinatra, Tulip, Tiloki, Kannu, Charlotte, Aranea, Templeton, Wilbur, Maple, Elm, Oak, Cypress, Pine, Sycamore, Birch
Adopted: Mango and Jalapeño (together), Yo-Yo and Shane (together), Raleigh, Spicey, Hannah, Analisa, Macaw, Celeste, Odessa, Slim
Returned: Gladys and Leodis (together), Panthera, DW, Giovanni, Hannah (pictured in top thumbnail), Mama Kitty
Promoted to the Lobby: Ilya
Promoted to the Community Room: Sasha
Promoted to the Lounge: Kamate
Promoted to Heaven: Kyle (in Forever Foster with angel Drew), Boeing (who also spent his final days in Drew’s tender care)
Stuff We Learned: The world is, indeed, full of war, weeping, and low-waisted jeans. But it is equally full of people who hand-sew diapers for cats, and cats who shape-shift into hot water bottles in your arms, and dahlias and Dahlia and the dahlia man, and the chance to cherish each other as though we were all kittens.
Nobody makes it out of kittenhood without some disappointment.
But no Tabby’s Place people need to make it alone.
May is waiting. Let’s do this together.