To my dear Tabby’s Place Family,
You are loved and appreciated more than all of the very many following words can adequately express.
This is a meager attempt to tell you why.
2023 was a wretched, painful year.
There were times when I could bear neither the pain nor the weight of my burdens alone. Similarly stricken, my relatives could not help to hold me up as they wished to, though they tried even as they too faltered.
Yet, throughout the year, as with the 5 years prior, you were there with gentle eyes, warm hugs, and depths of kindness that could drown all sorrows. You allowed me to cry in your arms. You made me feel loved, wanted, whole, and part of something important, something rooted in caring, something truly special. You were there to provide tremendous joys that added balance to the scales.
2023 was an amazingly beautiful year.
We joined hearts, hands, and hard work to open Quinn’s Corner grandly.
We returned fully back to ourselves by hosting events to welcome would-be volunteers and to give thanks and to spoil the cats with a little too much turkey.
We flung rose petals in honor of lost feline friends. We welcomed new friends and waved, happy-sad, as many left for their forever homes.
Some very special people helped more than 50 cat-erpillars transform into monarch butterflies, reminding us all that, together, we too have wings.
The end of 2023 marked the end of my first year serving Tabby’s Place as a Board member and officer. Your trust in me is a great honor.
Despite my human failings, despite my all too frequent inability to say things in precisely the way I intend, you listen with compassionate understanding and open minds.
Despite my case of imposter syndrome, you assure me that I belong among you, and you make me believe you just as much as I believe in you.
In return for your faith in me, I promise to continue acting in good faith, to do the best that I can for each of you through service to our beloved cats.
Every sweet cuddle with Ash, each soothing minute of lap time with Carrot, every “race” with Prescott (She’s always the winner, yet I am too), and each “quiet” moment with Grecca is a “Thank You” to each and every one of you.
To those on site, I love you for the love you give and all the hands-on work you do for the cats, be they young and healthy, aging gracefully, dealing with paraplegia, or rising above the negative positives of nasty, naughty viruses.
To those far off, I love you for your generosity, support, and unconditional love for the cats, no matter the obstacles life brings to us or them.
You are all amazing.
2024 is already setting up its own line of challenges for me, and likely for many of you. Because of you…of us…these can be faced more readily.
Although my work for the board, my receptionist shifts, and my writing take more time and energy than I sometimes fear I have, you restore me, and I know that I can serve you well. I cannot promise perfection, my primary failing being that I am not a cat, despite my pen name.
Yet, I can promise to do my best. I can and do solemnly promise to put in every effort to continue earning your faith in me as well as your kindness and support. Fortunately for me, you are not the kind to expect perfection, rather you embrace us all – felines and humans alike – exactly as we are.
Tabby’s Place may not be my whole world, but my world would be so much less, so many shades of grey, if orange and blue were not a part of it.
Thank you, all, for filling my world with color, with hope, and, most of all, with love.
Ever and gratefully yours,
Kitty LeFey