Since the Quinn’s Corner expansion has led to a very necessary increase in the volunteer population at Tabby’s Place, it has been recognized that many of us volunteers have few opportunities to get to know each other well. There are special events, but there needed to be more ways to bring this ever-growing, changing group closer together. One way is to fill out a form that can be shared on internal social media. This form allows each volunteer an opportunity to introduce themselves, including sharing who are their favorite Tabby’s Place cats and what are their most memorable moments at Tabby’s Place.
It is important to note that all Tabby’s Place moments are memorable moments. Take for example, the recent moment when a fellow volunteer waved me into a suite to help mediate negotiations between Kilo and Katniss. For her part Katniss was soaking wet and very scared. For his part Kilo was very, very…Kilo. Later in the day, this time with Hashbrown, Kilo was once again the momentum behind a moment.
Kilo may not be very big yet. In fact, Kilo is a monument in miniature. Yet, Kilo is kilowatts of light and kilotons of mass and kilojoules of energy all bundled up inside about one kilogram of weight. We would walk all of the kilometers around the world to give Kilo the full weight of his worth in love and fish mush.
We will do our best to help Kilo learn to cat in such ways as to be a bit less disruptive to his fellow felines, even if it takes every kilosecond to do it. We know that Kilo is just taking a moment to adjust to new surroundings and circumstances.
When you are the biggest thing in your galaxy, it can be hard to recognize that there are other similarly sized galaxies in intergalactic orbit, and each has equally big things inside them. Cats are, after all, as massive as the very most supermassivest black holes. Each cat is exactly ”that moment when” something really monumental happens – full force and high impact, no matter how fleeting or small.
Each cat is the moment when SQUEEEEEEEE, Ash is not only letting another volunteer pet her, Ash is demanding more scritches, just exactly so. Each cat is the moment when Yuki snuggles at the center of a Community Room cuddle pile despite her only very recent introduction into the room. Each cat is that moment when Hips leans familiarly against a person’s leg or Prescott races up the bowling alley length of the lobby just for the joy of it.
At Tabby’s Place each cat is Kilo. Each cat explodes into our hearts with the force of supernovae and quasars. With all of the momentum, it’s understandable that adjustments take time. Kilo’s adaptation to the suite life might be swift, or it might take a moment or three.
In time, someone will take note of that moment when Kilo decides that every cat is his best friend, or, at least, not his nemesis. We will help him get there. For his part, Kilo will help us with all the SQUEEEEEEEE when he does.