Yes, we’re going there.
No, there is not some other Olive here.
Yes, I believe there is a person in the Tabby’s Place family with a big enough heart to break our hearts.
I don’t know where you are. I don’t know where you’ve been these last six years. I do know that you will arrive right on time.
So does Olive, although that doesn’t mean she’s going to be patient. Olive was born with eight times the ordinary allotment of urgency. Olive has never done anything insignificant in her life. It is of the utmost importance that Olive gets to do all that Olive needs to do.
It is understandable that Olive is often exasperated.
How would you feel if you were the only cat capable of properly greeting visitors to Tabby’s Place? Do you have any idea what responsibility Olive carries? Yet she bears it with valor and splendor. Whether she just got two breakfasts or she just woke up from a nightmare in which she is no longer Empress, Olive shows up to work. She rows her full radiance to the front door, whether the arrival is Harrison Ford or some guy selling gutter helmets. She pirouettes as only a paraplegic cat can do. She administers fond head-bonks, even if the guest says “what’s wrong with that one?” or “Is that a small orca?”
She welcomes the stranger, because that is what good mammals do.
But while Olive is going about her sacred, selfless work, a ragged band of scalawags and rapscallions shows up to interrupt. Olive has heard them referred to as “the Tabby’s Place staff.” She is not so sure about that, because she didn’t hire us. The nicest thing she can say is that we are workers of iniquity with brains the size of Milk Duds.
Olive is trying to keep Tabby’s Place running — with a little style and verve, no less — and these stubborn stick insects have to come squeeze her bladder and change her diaper.
It’s a wonder she hasn’t called the United Nations to intervene, or at least Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen. (Olive knows who gets things done in New Jersey.)
Prescott once told Olive that it’s a good thing the dweebs express their bladders, although Prescott did not say “dweebs,” because Prescott is a traitor. (I am just writing what Olive tells me.) Prescott said that paraplegic and paraparetic cats cannot fully empty their own bladders, so they need dweebs to help them, or else they will get life-threatening infections. Olive thought that sounded very creative, but you can’t trust a cat who doesn’t wear a diaper.
Although Olive has the upper body strength of several Vin Diesels and at least one The Rock, she cannot prevent “people” (Olive uses the term loosely) from changing her diaper. She cannot prevent them from purchasing diapers festooned with dingbat flowers and detestable ribbons, no matter how many times she requests dragons and bats. All she can do is emit sounds straight out of the underworld, ideally when major donors are visiting for the first time.
Fortunately, the indignity is efficient, so Olive can return to her duties.
When she is not welcoming strangers, Olive patrols the perimeter of the Tabby’s Place lobby for unsavory characters, by which I mean leaves. Most people don’t know this, but the greatest threat to Tabby’s Place is an oak leaf or — mercy help us all — one of those sly helicopter things. Left unattended, they will grow into gremlins and orcs with sideburns like Martin van Buren. (I am just writing what Olive tells me.) Fortunately, Olive is there to eat them.
If you are paying attention, you know that this adds up to well over eighty hours of work a week. Such is Olive’s devotion to Tabby’s Place. We have not even discussed such ad hoc duties as telling Jack he is too orange and attempting to subpoena Jonathan to address the unequal distribution of diapers among paraplegic cats. None of these tasks can be delegated. Only Olive is qualified.
And only you, out there, somewhere, are qualified to adopt Olive.
She may be known for her work ethic and her unprecedented brilliance. She may look like a Disney Princess in her friggin’ diaper. (I will not write what Olive told me. She used a word considerably stronger than “friggin.'”) She may even save New Jersey several dozen times a day, asking for nothing in return but global domination.
But none of this is the essence of Olive.
The truth about Olive is that Olive is made entirely of truth.
She loves life so much, she knows it will not get mad if she gets honest.
She can holler at dweebs and slip out of her diaper because she knows she cannot fall out of love’s hands.
She is exuberance on four legs, two of which work, and two of which sail upright like victory flags.
She is Olive, and we adore her to the utmost.
If you adopt her, we will probably burst into tears repeatedly for the rest of our lives. (This is to be expected from dweebs.)
If you adopt her, we will definitely nominate you for the Nobel Prize in Awesome Glorious Radness.
If you adopt her, you will break our hearts.
Please break our hearts.