Chickens are best left uncounted until they’re hatched.

Gold medals are best left un-boasted-of until they’re swinging around your neck.

Adoptions are best left unblogged until they’re official.

It’s been an itchy few weeks of sitting on our hands here at Tabby’s Place.

Imagine your great grandma Bertha, at age 103, has just finished outswimming Michael Phelps and Missy Franklin, outrunning Usain Bolt, outflipping all those pommel horse guys, and outdunking the entire Dream Team. She has so many gold medals around her tiny neck that you can’t even see her “#1 Nana” sweatshirt (which is a shame, since it’s the exact same shade of pink as the rollers still in her hair). Your whole family is overflowing with Bertha bliss. You can’t wait to tell someone – everyone – about this amazing news. They will faint. They will swoon in the streets. They will experience new levels of glee and mushy-heart-happiness. Bertha’s triumph will raise the GNJ (Gross National Joy) by 600%.

But here’s the catch: Bertha’s medals aren’t yet official. Those picky judges are finalizing just a few picky things, and Bertha hasn’t ascended the podium in her Hover-Round just yet.

So you have to wait.

You have to keep this outrageously, deliciously, excruciatingly fabulous news to yourself.

Well, Tabby’s Place is the Olympics, adoption is a gold medal, and Bertha is none other than Dobro.
Yes, that Dobro.
Yes, really.
And we’ve been sitting on this news for 450 eons over 3 weeks. Sitting on the end of a fencing sword would have been more comfortable.

But before you storm Tabby’s Place with flaming torches, know this: Dobro’s golden adoption wasn’t official.

More precisely, it was, then it wasn’t.

When Dobro’s New Dad (that’s DND to you) put Dobro on hold to be adopted, he thought he’d found his gold-medal barn cat. Adding to the delight, DND found his silver medalist in Gorgonzola and bronze in Campana – and he was planning to adopt the entire podium.

In preparation for the trio’s fantastic journey, our brave vet team thoroughly examined each cat, in addition to tipping their ears and giving them the appropriate vaccines for barn life.

The vet team hit a snafu when they opened Dobro’s (sedated) mouth. The tough guy of suite A had a mouthful of troubled teeth, and they needed to come out.

They all needed to come out. Except one. (Which, in a way, is somehow even sadder, because now he can’t even say he’s ruthless and toothless.)

Suddenly the gold medalist didn’t look like such a shiny prospect for mouse-catching, and DND began to waver. Wanting the best for Dobro, DND worried that the marmalade wildman might need future dental care…and that, once freed in the barn, he might be uncatchable.

And so DND became CAJND. That would be, for those of you who cannot read my mind, Campana And Jitterbug‘s Dad.

In a complete reshuffling of the podium, silver medalist ‘Zola abdicated her medal, opting instead to stay at Tabby’s Place with Dobro. (This was DND’s decision, too. But only because Gorgonzola had brainwashed him first. Good girl.) Wanting at least two timid cats for his barn, DND started afresh, looking for a good bud for Campana. He found his girl in beautiful, jittery Jitterbug. It was a tie for gold – but a very different picture than we’d first planned.

And that’s why we don’t announce things like Dobro’s adoption or Bertha’s gold medal or my marriage to Colin Firth until they have actually, totally, officially transpired.

But fear not, neither be dismayed: I can say with Jupiter-sized confidence that Dobro does not care.

DND can keep his barn. You can keep your gold medal and all five of those stinkin’ Olympic rings. Dobro does not care.

He, Zola, Valencia and Scooter can now go back to their previously scheduled programming of shooting humans the stinkeye from atop the Suite A ramp. They have actually submitted this activity to the International Olympic Committee for possible inclusion in the 2016 Rio di Janiero summer games. I dare say it’s even more impressive and terrifying than that strange phenomenon known as the pommel horse. (Have you seen the pommel horse? Please tell me who came up with this.) You might say that Dobro and friends are our very own pommel horsemen. The four pommel horsemen of the apocalypse, that is. (Which would be an outstanding name for a band. But I digress.)

In all seriousness, there’s nothing sad about this story. If you believe – and I do – that every day in Dobro’s book is hand-written by an Author who loves him more than we can imagine, this is surely for Dobro’s highest good. We can’t presume to know the details of how all things work together for good, but only trust that they do – and, over and over and over and over again, our trust is rewarded with gold that lasts.

Remember Gumbo. Remember Spike. Remember Starlet/Caitlin. Remember your own miracle-strewn path to where you are today. (Make no mistake: if you’re still here, there’s a reason, and there have been miracles. True fact.) And trust that the same Author has Dobro covered.

Meantime, our tough, almost-toothless guy is not wasting a fraction of a second feeling sorry for himself. Dobro’s Tabby’s Place life is good – maybe even golden.

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I think I’d better hitch a ride on one of those Olympic kayaks – if Dobro finds out I’ve compared him to an elderly woman on a motorized scooter, there’s going to be revenge of Olympic proportions. Ask not for whom the pommel horse pommels – it pommels for thee.

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