This is not a hobby.
This is not a game.
This is Scrabble, and all his letters come down to Y-O-U.
When you are playing Scrabble (the board game), it is an excellent thing to use all your tiles in a single round. They call this a “bingo.” It will get you fifty bonus points and impress everyone at the table.
But when you are Scrabble (the kitten), you don’t have a tile to spare. By the time you’re twelve hours old, you don’t have enough letters left to spell L-I-F-E. They call this a “hopeless situation.”
Your only hope is that someone will rearrange their own letters, give you their points, and hoist you up onto love’s table.
That would break the world’s cruel rules. But a different game is afoot at Tabby’s Place.
A foot was just one of Scrabble’s broken pieces. Make it two, and his leg, too. The injuries occurred in his first hours on Earth.
Before your morning coffee got cold, the newest of newborns lost his mother.
Utterly defenseless, Scrabble could not spell his own survival. He was injured and invisible, without the strength to mew.
If you read the handbook of “The Way Things Usually Go,” it clearly states that such a kitten cannot win. It is impossible. He is one bruised blossom under the frost. He is a little brown hazelnut in a haystack. He is one whispery love letter in a world of shouting matches.
No one is coming for him. Besides, they would never make it in time.
Unless … Y-O-U cherish the most forgotten kitten.
Against all odds, our orphan caught the eye of kindness. Though Scrabble was just a tuft of tabby fur, already turning cold, his stripes and spots spelled H-E-L-P!
Animal Control took pity on the newborn, but they knew he would not last the night. The moon was up, Scrabble’s temperature was down, and the one ridiculous hope was that someone with just the right skills would stay up all night feeding, warming, and giving every last tile for a crumpled kitten whose fight already appeared to be lost.
But there is always a light in love’s window.
Mercy never sleeps.
Though it was late at night, Animal Control delivered Scrabble to the door of a Tabby’s Place staff member.
And if you gave to last year’s Cherish the Kittens Fund Drive, you — personally — answered.
Would we take this little one, unwanted by his own mother, unlikely to survive?
They would understand if the answer was “no.” He was just one kitten in a loud world, and the hour was late, and his needs were huge, and —
— “Y-E-S” did not require a single word. Our staff member took Scrabble in her arms. And in that moment, he entered the palm of your hand.
You provided heat support through delicate hours, sleepless with no resentment.
You fed Scrabble through the night, fighting off death’s attempts to grab him from our hands.
Your entire world was the size of one frightened baby with a head smaller than a dandelion.
You were as large as love.
And when morning came, death skulked off like a bad loser, while Scrabble curled up like a cinnamon roll in his first sunrise.
Life is always improvising new rules, and love has many rounds. Just as Scrabble became stable, and started getting used to a routine of bandaging his broken leg and toes, the tiles rearranged yet again.
It turns out Scrabble is a true “Tabby’s Place cat.”
When his blue eyes opened, we realized Scrabble was B-L-I-N-D. He grew older, but not larger. Dehydration roared back when we least expected it, as though death was trying to cheat.
Some days, Scrabble was so fragile, his foster parent kept him attached to her own body around the clock, so there would be no gap in heartbeats between Y-O-U and M-E.
Some might say this is an awful lot of cherishing for just one little brown kitten.
But you, Tabby’s Place family, would say that one kitten sums up to W-O-R-T-H-Y.
And we are calling on you to cherish the kittens who will arrive, helpless and hopeless, this spring.
Today launches our Cherish the Kittens Fund Drive, and your donation will be doubled for a kitten in despair.
More than likely, she has not yet been born. She will arrive already dying, with no love letters to her name.
Out in the world, they will call her “hopeless.” They will call her “needy.” They will call her “just one kitten.”
We will call her by a beautiful name. We will call her beloved.
But we can only do this if you answer the knock at your door.
And this may be the most important Cherish the Kittens Fund Drive of all time for newborns like Scrabble. At long last, we are in a position to build a world-class Kitten Nursery.
Tabby’s Place family, I can’t overstate how many lives you will help to save in this endeavor. We will finally be able to provide comprehensive care for newborns too fragile for anyone else to handle, as well as nursing mothers and their babies.
Cherish the kittens, and you change the world.
You will upend the awful odds. You will turn over the table where the game of life is lost.
And you will be here with Scrabble as his saga continues.
At several months old, our sweet survivor is still the size of a mozzarella stick. Renowned specialists are working to determine his diagnosis, and to ensure that he will thrive.
Though he is tiny, Scrabble is jaunty and joyous, a caramel-striped clown with a purr that could spell P-E-A-C-E for the whole wide world.
And you can make the next Scrabble the center of your world.
This is our moment, and these are our kittens.
Your kittens.