Dusty, Tigre, and Marmalade all found slots in the foster system at the same time today and were suddenly gone.

On the obvious level it’s a huge relief. Two rooms are freed up, and so is time, and so is most importantly is the ineffable quality of mental bandwidth. It’s not a full return to normalcy, but it does roll the clock back to the point where things stood a few months ago at least.

I will miss each of them individually and in the collective too.

There is no such thing as a pain-free life. To love is to open oneself to loss.

There’s one more cat out there to bring in from the cold, a battle-scarred veteran we call Silver though he is black and white all over. He comes here twice a day on average and eats like this is the only place he knows for food. He’s lived with people and takes love easily, but now no one else cares for him at all.

One of the little rooms will doubtless be taken up by him soon. It probably won’t take three months to move him along to the sanctuary pipeline. But the ache of the heart will return for a time when he goes, just as with the three today.

If there was any additional legitimate indoor room to be had here, we’d already have added to the stupidly large collection of feline souls.

But it’s not good for the house, or the existing cat residents, or for the cats themselves to keep packing them in here.

This is the high hidden cost of trying to maintain a footing in the salvation business.