On a cold spring day, we are the world’s vagabonds.
We huddle together on the sharp corner of hope.
Our begging bowls are empty, and our eyes are full of tears.
We’ve lost two kittens.
There will never come a day when this is acceptable. Tell us all you want about kittens’ impossible fragility. Comfort us with the oatmeal of “you save so many!”
When the world fits in your palm, an empty hand is the Grand Canyon of grief.
This was not supposed to happen.
Weetabix, Krispie, Frootloop, Captain Crunch, and Cheerio were our first orphan litter of 2023. Pea-sized poetry, they arrived on the first full day of spring, just as we charged the world to Cherish the Kittens with us.
You may love ten thousand kittens, but your bowl and your smile and your belly of laughs overflow with each one. The Tabby’s Place staff shrunk to age five as our hearts expanded five hundred times in size.
They were perfect, and powerless, and mighty to remind us that life is music.
Our foster families flew into action, ladling love by the gallon, bottle-feeding our hungry horde. Five kittens, lighter than an oatmeal cookie, tilted the scale of the world towards wonder.
Captain Crunch, our orange admiral, sailed the high seas with a marmalade drizzle and a heavenly squeak.
Cheerio, peaches and cream with gerbil ears, made us grin like the moon, a choir of awestruck “OHs.”
Tortie Frootloop is a riot of color and charm, rainbows of everything right in the world.
Weetabix grins with whole-grain gentleness, a teaspoon of sunrise with a gallon of light.
Krispie, light as a dandelion and puffed with lioness zest, has us crackling with joy.
They claimed the bottle and the blanket and our hearts as their birthright. Which, of course, was completely right. They represented five worlds of wonder and worth, five lives poured into our bowl for the sole purpose of belovedness.
They should have all lived to twenty.
But the Captain and the Cheer-leader were scarcely with us twenty hours.
We say all the right things to each other, spinning together like the last Grape Nuts in the bowl. We’re grateful they were here. We’re grateful we were theirs. We’re grateful that love is no respecter of time, and the bonds we shared are everlasting.
We’re poured out like sugar tears.
We’re only at the beginning of kitten season, already reminded how much love costs.
We’re reminded why we’re asking you to Cherish the Kittens, why palm-sized dreams need resources, and rebellious hope, and relentless love.
We look at Weetabix and Krispie and Frootloop and will them to flourish, our heroic foster families doing everything in human power.
We remember the limits of human power.
We remember the limitlessness of love.
We remember to hold our bowls high, begging and blessed all at once.
We will remember Cheerio and Captain Crunch forever.
Please join us.
Like you say, it never is right. To look at those precious faces and tiny feet and think they will not flourish, they will not run around the halls of Tabby’s Place looking for awesome adopters is a sad feeling. Please continue to cherish the kittens for us – we love them so.