Love has letters for us all, but each one is unique.
Love may ask you to sing French lullabies to a child with the flu.
Love may place a bottle in your left hand and a kitten in your right, even if you are the one trembling.
Love may overwhelm your best intentions, until you are the one in need of love.
Love recently sent one of its more demanding letters to Tabby’s Place.
A beautiful person had been caring for many cats, for many years. But the constellations started crowding in on each other, and there was static on the rainbow connection.
There were twenty, thirty, forty cats. The little ones’ eyes were red and gummed shut, and tiny sneezes rang across the property. The person who loved them wept with them.
She was not strong enough to save the world. She was stronger than that: able to accept help.
Love lit its lanterns, and Tabby’s Place was on the road.
Working together, we would have to be as patient as presence itself. When this many lives are at stake, your eyes must be open. You must become one with the moment. You cannot call it a day while red eyes are still crying in the night.
You cannot go it alone. Love won’t allow it. Love cobbles together a fellowship of the fond and fearless.
Love is working ’round the clock, and it is all hands on deck.
The TNR Fund sponsors are with us. These valiant donors may live in El Paso or Vienna, but they are here. The numbers on the back of a debit card become bows and arrows against sickness and despair. The prayers across time zones become warm hands around newborns.
The volunteers are here, even if their bodies are folding towels back at the sanctuary. Their tireless toil dries the weeping eyes of orphans and their uncles. Their countless hours pack years onto little lives running out of time.
You are here, you who have heard all your life that you are “too sensitive.” You read this blog, and you love our cats. You lay awake, sending them your radiance, willing them to recover.
If you’re able, your donation right now will support this unprecedented mission.
In a tale this tumultuous, love asks something different of every character.
But as brave hearts answer, the kittens are opening their eyes. The world is changing. Hope is becoming sight.
The person who loved them has become people, a long peace train. Love is a crowded station, where everyone is holding a sign with their names.
Ah, yes. A word about their names. Yes, it’s true. We have a kitten named Tissue. Indeed, we are mocking the idea that strays are “disposable.”
Or maybe we knew that, in the end, it is always the cats and kittens who dry our eyes.
Yes, it’s true. We are in need of love.
This puts us in excellent company.
May we weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, one great fellowship of the tenacious and the tear-stained.