Greetings, Olive fans!

Summertime and the livin’ is easy…but then it’s usually easy for Olive, who’s having a lovely time serving as the Tabby’s Place greeter. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, this month’s medical news for Olive: There is none. Woo hoo! Our girl has had a month of stable good health.

Olive had some special visitors over the past few weeks. A group of visitors came down from the ASPCA in New York to tour Tabby’s Place. Predictably, they were utterly enchanted by Olive, but then she’s continuing her longstanding behavior of being very tolerant with our visitors. Anyone who watches her for a few minutes can see her fearless spirit.

But, while the staff gets growls if they try just to touch her, Olive is curiously well-mannered with people she does not know. In fairness to Olive, it’s usually true that the staff trying to touch her means she’s either going to get her bladder expressed or a veterinary exam of some sort, and no cat likes that. But our Executive Director notes that as feisty as she is with us, she’s very charming when strangers are around. Perhaps she’s trying to lull them into a false sense of security so one of them will take her home!

I’ve noticed something funny about Olive. If you keep up on current cat events in our lobby (mind you, that’s not always an easy task), you know that Anka inhabits his own section of the lobby because he cannot be trusted around other felines. When he was first put into his enclosure, Olive made a point to come up to the barrier and hiss vigorously at Anka, apparently trying to show him that she wasn’t going to put up with any nonsense from any newcomers.

But Anka has now lived in his enclosure for months, and Olive still hisses at him periodically—at least until she gets distracted. Recently, I was in the lobby, and I watched her head purposefully toward Anka’s enclosure. But I was facing our front door, and Olive was not; I could see visitors approaching. Olive had just started another mighty hiss when the front door opened and the visitors entered.

Instantly, our lobby greeter stopped in mid-hiss, spun around, and headed off toward the visitors as quickly as possible. I could only laugh; it seemed like she was keeping up the hissing just for the sake of appearances. Fortunately, Anka doesn’t care about Olive or her vocal disapproval of him.

Our spunky young lady delights visitors and keeps our staff and volunteers on their toes. Thank you so much for choosing to help us help Olive.

Your correspondent,
Stephanie