Luck is fine, if your aspirations are modest.
Luck is sufficient to win the MegaMillions.
But luck is far too little for a kitten.
In the icy mud of January, one kitten seemed stuck with no more than luck.
Luck was smaller than the ginger gerbil with gummy eyes. Luck was smaller than the frizzy orange carnation that fell from a fading stem. Luck was smaller than the slip of paper inside a fortune cookie, the mass-produced promise that can encourage or disturb.
Luck was far smaller than Fortune Cookie, winter’s worried orphan. A kitten alone is always in peril; a kitten out of season is a mewing misfortune. A kitten chewed raw by illness is an oversized emergency.
A kitten with feline leukemia virus (FeLV) is too huge for half-measures.
Eyes stuck shut, lungs aching to inflate, Fortune Cookie was an orange balloon trapped in the branches. Luck may clap for life’s winners, but it will not take off its shoes and climb the tree for the trembling.
Luck leaves the room when it hears the word “hopeless.”
Luck walks out of the movie when the sad music starts.
You can’t blame luck. It’s such a small thing, random as a four-leaf clover, small as dice in a sweaty hand. You can’t blame luck, and you can’t count on it.
So we counted on you.
This time last year, you were lacing up your shoes. You knew luck lacked the stamina to join you. You left it drooling in the easy chair. You made the hard decision.
You made your love enormous.
You gave to our Cherish the Kittens Fund Drive. You gave, and you gave, and you gave, and you gave, even though you could not see the faces who would otherwise face the end. You glimpsed them in the lens of your heart. You widened your eyes. You grew and grew and grew and grew.
Somehow you knew. Fortune Cookie would come, and luck would not be large enough.
And when he did, luck had nothing to do with it.
The crumbling kitten fell soft into the blanket you warmed last year. Luck is too little to say “yes,” but love sings it into the starless night. Fortune Cookie came to Tabby’s Place, where healed kittens hopscotch over “hopeless situations.”
It was yet winter, but all the holidays crowded in upon one kitten. It was Independence Day after the long war of despair. It was Thanksgiving for the feast of mercy. It was Valentine’s Day for the love of a single kitten with the single “worst” disease.
It was St. Patrick’s Day for the redheaded rover who rode your rainbow to love’s gold.
Fortune Cookie has fully recovered. His embattled blue eyes are open skies. His FeLV is too small to even pause the parade. He plays the shillelagh and leaps like a leprechaun in a forever home that is far more than “fortunate.”
He is sending friends, and we are sending for you.
It is St. Patrick’s Day again, and the kittens are coming. For the easy and the strong, luck will lay down a red carpet. This is the way of the world.
But luck checks out when the kitten is a Fortune Cookie. The orphans and the ailing need more. The broken and the forgotten need miracles. The FeLV+, and the paraplegic, and the precious need Tabby’s Place.
They need your love, full-sized.
This time next year, we want to do a jig for the kittens who crashed through bad luck.
That will only happen if you cherish them today.
The only force on earth large enough to save their lives is love.
Please give from the golden depths of your hearts, Tabby’s Place family.