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Trying to tell you

Trying to tell you

What am I trying to tell you when I blog?

What are we trying to say when we beg your mercy, your emotions, and your donations?

What is the Linda Fund really all about?

There are people out there — maybe you’ve encountered them — who aren’t so keen on what we do at Tabby’s Place. At best, they think we’re a sort of frilly confection adorning the tough meat of life, an enjoyable but optional, fun but frivolous diversion from Meaningful Things. We are, after all, all about cats. Cats are fun; cats are pleasant; but cats are “just cats.”

It’s especially hard trying to explain something like the Linda Fund to such souls. After all, we are explicitly, excitedly asking you to give up your hard-earned money to fund the very expensive care of especially sick cats.

Cats who, by some other calculus, could or should be discarded.
Cats who, in a not-uncommon accounting, really aren’t worth it.

So what are we trying to do here?
What am I trying to say, every time I sit at this Bucca-fur-coated keyboard and peck out too many words?
What do we want to tell you, beseech of you, beckon you towards?

Love, love, and only love.

Every time we give more than “makes sense” to a cat, we are doing more than simply ministering to that cat — which would be enough, heaven knows it would be enough. We are taking a stand against everything that arrays itself against love.

And, as has been said by one wiser than me, love’s in need of love today.

When I feebly fumble out the story of one cat or another — one small creature among so many millions — I’m trying to tell you that there is a Love large enough to enfold the small. I’m struggling to say that this one matters, which means that you matter, which means that I matter, which means that there is a Love that will not let us go, that we are — each of us — worth it.

We love the little because it’s the only love that counts. One by one by one by one, each as though they were they only one.

Tabby’s Place is unrepentantly non-utilitarian. We do not make our decisions based on helping the greatest number, faceless and impressive. Some would say we are foolish in our love, our stubbornly little way of lasering in on the few.

But in the end, all we can do is adore the ones we’re given, the daily bread of beasts and beings who need us. Over and over and over again, we surrender ourselves to love.

Even if it goes unseen. Even if it seems outrageous. Even if it’s unspectacular in its one-cat, one-human, one-soul scale.

Love is always spectacular.

And kittens, I’m trying — in words and tears and giggles and fundraising appeals — to tell you that you are loved.

I will keep trying, until the keys fall off my board and the words run dry and my last breath sings — to say that you are held by a Love so everlasting, you will never, ever, ever be alone. You are seen in your smallness and embraced in your invisibility.

Drill down through the dramas and foolishness and frippery of life, and you’ll find a soft place to land, together with all the cats past and present, and all the saints and angels too: love, love, and only love.

 

“At last I have found my vocation. My vocation is love.”
– St. Thérèse de Lisieux

Photos from top to bottom: Polly, Toast, Jude, Jupiter, Marjory, Hamsa

4 thoughts on “Trying to tell you

  1. Made me feel special. Your words, these thoughts, should appear in the “Letters To The Editor” section of every newspaper and magazine in America. “Love, that’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” Wonderful writing. Thank you, Angela.

  2. I am glad I am part of the care of 2 special cats. I had a 3rd I sponsored, but he passed in February of 2019, just days before my Dad. I will keep taking care of these 2 precious lives. Thank you for All you do Everyone at Tabby’s Place.

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