If you are lucky, you will love many Lindas.
If you are more than lucky, you will be a Linda.
Today begins the 2024 Linda Fund Matching Challenge. You may have questions.
Who is Linda, and why are we funding her activities?
I’m glad you asked.
Linda was a kitten, in the class of 2011. Her activities involved “surviving” and “thriving.”
But standing between Linda and her goals was a monumental challenge.
More accurately, standing between Linda and the earth itself were two monumental challenges: Linda’s own front legs.
Somewhere in her first weeks of life, the little pinch of pixie dust fell into harm. By the time we met Linda, her front legs were wands of agony, burned bald and raw. We did not know if she’d stepped into a toxic substance or scraped her baby skin against the world’s roughness.
There was no guarantee that Linda would survive.
But when you are a Linda, you have a promise better than a guarantee.
Even before she had a name, Linda had a high-chair at the Tabby’s Place table. Her condition was grave, and her shrieks shook the ceiling. But she was an orphan no more. She was ours.
Her needs towered, but love was taller.
We rained down promises on the bewildered kitten. We would go to the ends of the earth on her behalf. She would have the best medical care on any planet, regardless of cost.
Linda could not walk, so love became her legs. Love raced her to the emergency hospital. Love left the ghost of “hopeless” in a cloud of pixie dust.
This is what love does for Lindas.
Linda lived, and Linda leapt upon the legs she was not expected to keep. 
Thirteen years later, Linda’s love and legs are vaulting into old age (in a fabulous forever home). The kitten most desperate became the kitten most adored.
Linda survived. Linda thrived.
But Linda was only one Linda.
Linda has the distinction of being the Linda who inspired the Linda Fund. You do not need to weigh more than three pounds, or be known by more than ten people, to change the world — not if you are a Linda. As Linda left Tabby’s Place, her eyes smiled over her adopter’s shoulder with a “thank you” … and a challenge.
Linda challenged us to save all the Lindas.
Linda challenged us to remember that we are all Lindas.
I will not glitter-coat the facts. The care that saves the Lindas is not cheap.
A kitten with burned legs, a Gulliver whose travels have turned terrible, or a precious, precarious Prescott is not “easy” to save. The costs are colossal. Each cat is exquisitely, excruciatingly individual. Emergency and specialty care is our most unpredictable expense.
We trade predictions for a promise. We will not break it. We will not say “no” to a single Linda.
They cannot contribute to their own survival. All they have to offer is their trust. It is more than enough.
And so, the Linda Fund Matching Challenge began. Late every summer, your donation gets doubled for the most desperate. They will come. They will blow like tumbleweeds into our arms, limp and longing for life.
They will tremble in the snow, wondering if there is warmth enough for one more.
The Linda Fund Matching Challenge is how we prepare for their arrival.
There is no time to fundraise when a Linda or a Prescott comes. That is the hour of hope, or not. We do not believe in “or not” at Tabby’s Place.
The Linda Fund is our stockpile of “yeses.” Benefactors double your donations, and dollars and cents get smelted into survivals.
You give now, so we will be ready for the Lindas tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
You give now, because Lindas are legion.
They are Amaryllis, the tortie who was thrown by a car and landed in our promise. They are Farva, the happy-go-luckiest sprite ever to outlive “luck.” They are Harriet, full of strength and dignity.
They are you and me, every time we have nothing to offer but need.
We will all be Lindas, sometime or another. We will be burned, and we will shriek. We will have nothing to contribute to our own hope.
Maybe you have already been a Linda.
Maybe “surviving” was a challenge too colossal for your trembling legs. Maybe someone carried you across the rickety bridge from “hopeless” to “whole.” There was no guarantee that you would make it.
There was only a promise.
And here you are, a Linda in full bloom.
Here you are, with us.
We are counting on you, brave ones. The year ahead is filled with Lindas. Picture their faces. The gift you make today is the promise that they can have a tomorrow. Your gift will be doubled.
Your gift is your Linda light, which blazes long after your wounds have healed.
Let love be your legs. Let the Linda Fund begin.