Things are about to get personal.
We’re going to look in your eyes and read you our holiday wish list.
We’re not going to ask you for a trip to Paris or a piece of the moon.
We’re going to ask you to break our hearts.
Let’s be honest.
I want you to adopt all the Tabby’s Place cats. I especially want you to adopt the icons and legends, who have been here for years. They are the sugar plums left unpicked. They are the carols we know by heart.
I want you to adopt them.
I also vehemently do not want you to adopt them.
They are joy to our world. They remind our bells to jingle when the days are short and dark. They are our best friends. They are our best everything.
If you adopt them, you will break our hearts.
But if you adopt them, they will know the joy of finally, finally, finally being yours.
So I am putting it in writing. I am formally asking you to break our hearts.
We may as well begin with the angel at the top of the tree. Grecca would prefer that I call her a siren, but the proper species is “angel.”
Grecca agreed to let me write that after I told her how angels are really described in ancient writings. They are not vanilla-scented glitter ladies. They are several stories tall, covered in all-seeing eyes, and good at causing people to fall to their knees.
This matches Grecca’s self-image.
Grecca’s body type is all knees and elbows, a ribbon of nutmeg and cinnamon stripes. Her eyes are so large, they are orbited by many moons, called “volunteers.” You can identify them by the multiple breakfasts in their hands and the multiple circuits back to the kitchen for replacement breakfasts.
Grecca is not greedy. Grecca knows her worth. Grecca is worth the sum total of all breakfasts.
But, being an angel, Grecca is primarily concerned with you. She paces, her jade eyes filled with urgency. It is essential that you know what Grecca knows. Grecca knows that you are a creature of splendor and loveliness.
Yes, you, in the hoodie with the marinara stain. You, with feet the size of skis. You, wishing you did not cut your own bangs this morning. Grecca cannot keep the secret that you are made of miracles from your soul to your ear hair.
This is why she sings.
There is music in her urgency, and it is only 49% related to her desire for seafood. There is a reason Grecca’s only lyric sounds like “WOW!” She is telling you what you are, and the proper species is — well, like she said. You are not a mere mortal. You are a WOW!
In the words of one visiting WOW, “How has nobody adopted such a sensational cat yet?”
I could tell you the “logical” reasons. Grecca is north of sixteen years old. Grecca’s medical history includes mammary cancer, kidney disease, and vocal volume in excess of the entire Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Grecca came to us from a high-volume shelter, where cats of a certain age are on a collision course with “poor outcomes.”
But Grecca has shouted louder than “logic” all her life.
She sprang down the interstate to Tabby’s Place, chosen by life itself to live. I would not be surprised if her own paws steadied the steering wheel.
She shrugged at surgery and chemotherapy, and three years later she does not remember cancer at all.
These days, she is sometimes wet to the touch when you pet her, but don’t blame it on the subcutaneous fluids. Grecca believes her own sunshine has melted all the ice, in all the winters.
She is not wrong.
How has nobody adopted such a sensational cat yet?
I can only surmise that Grecca, in all her frantic grace, is worth the wait. She is barely larger than the ballerina in a music box, but she is too fierce to be fragile. She dances to no song but her own.
Make her tutu magenta, not pastel.
She is an exasperated optimist. She gets as loud as she does because she knows: the best breakfast, and the best news, is still out there.
Prove her right. Break our hearts. Adopt our best friend, Grecca.