The Problem with Cats
I’m a dog person. I love dogs. When I was in high school, tons of people had those Garfields that stick onto your car window. I had a stuffed gray dog with Garfield’s tail hanging out of his mouth stuck to my window.
My first bad experience with a cat was my neighbor’s kittens. I was little, and my friend was littler. We were playing with the kittens, trying to touch them. One of the kittens batted me with full-on claws, and I told that little kitten off–“I don’t like you!” The mom of my friend overheard, and no amount of trying to explain ever convinced her that I wasn’t speaking to her precious child.
When I was in my late teens, I developed an allergy to cats. I figured that was all well and good, because I had no intention of ever having cats. And as if to prove how horrible cats were? Every time I’d visit someone their cat would rub all over me–my eyes would water, I would sneeze, and then the blamed thing would strike out at me with it’s murder claws.
Fuzzy
When I met my husband he had a cat. That was a definite strike against him. Said cat also had it out for me. She would lie in wait and attack whenever I visited. But he didn’t give up. He bathed that silly thing before I visited, and kept the cat in another room.
We learned to live together–peacefully. She in the garage, me in the house.
So, technically, in the most literal sense of the word, I had a cat. She lived in the same house as I did, but our interactions were limited. Even as she has gotten older (she will be 18 in November) and moved into the house, she has been confined largely to one room. I’m allergic to her.
Learning to Live with a Kitten
Then a few years ago, my husband was offered a kitten by one of his students. He set it up as a trial run. So, he brought home a tiny gray fluff ball on the last day of school. A little guy born in a barn on a farm. A trial visit. I told him it would go back at the end of the week. We really didn’t need a cat.
But that fluff ball was kind of cute. And it didn’t try to kill me like so many other cats that I’d met before. And he was awful cute and kind of cuddly. Before the end of the week he had a name, and there was no going back.
The kitten was going to be our new mouser. He would live outside in the garage, just like the old girl used to do.
So, it stayed.
A kitten required a lot of care, a lot of patience, and protection from the big red dog which–we are pretty certain felt obliged to eat the intruder.
We noticed that, unlike pretty much every other cat I’d ever met, I wasn’t allergic to him. So, I became the protector of the little gray fluff ball with the murder claws. I carted him to safety from one space to another. I checked on him when no one else was available to do so. I didn’t let him go outside.
And little by little the little fluff ball won a part of my heart. I taught him to sit. He comes when I call. He sleeps on me all night long. He is my cat. He is the cat that believes he is a dawg. An indoor, pampered prince that likes to tell his big brothers—the actual dogs—what to do.
Like so many other times, I told God, “I’m never going to ——” (In this case, that would be I’m never going to have a cat) He has shown me his plans are bigger than mine. He has offered me something better than I ever imagined.
Has God ever given you something, or lead you somewhere you never dreamed you desired?
