cats – goodchristianfiction

Lesson One: If You Want Something, Ask For It

If you have never had a cat, then you might find the concept of being in the house with your pet for an entire day without ever interacting with him a bit jarring. But, in the feline world, such days are business as usual.

However, whenever my cat is ready to need me, he has no problem making his needs known. He might meow loudly and arch his back at you. He also loves to plant his front legs squarely and heavily on the middle of your sleeping chest. If you are bald like my husband, he may even use the method of licking your forehead with his sandpaper tongue.

The bottom line is, the cat lets you know he means business. And the business he is always about, or at least mostly about, is being fed. In addition to his three squares, he also likes fish flakes, treats, and even carrots! Getting food and water for my indoor cat is the only essential need he cannot achieve for himself.

Lesson Two: Be Careful What You Ask For

Mastering the manipulative art of begging for his supper has an unwanted side effect for my isolationist feline. He often has to suffer my unwanted attentions.

Sometimes, despite his desire to be out of my arms, my cat’s body responds seemingly against his own will. A deep, melodious purr emits from his belly, a calming balm to me that seems at odds with the semi-wild look in his eye as he gauges when best to wiggle out of my grip.

Like so many of us, he seems at times like this, almost double-minded. He wants to be near me, but not so near that my person comes in contact with his catness. He has yet to master the actually comfortable position of being loved and free at one and the same time. Instead, he mistakes my affection for a cage he is all too eager to escape, even if he purrs while doing the escaping!

Lesson Three: Be Still

No one sleeps more peacefully than a cat. We humans toss and turn. Even dogs chase rabbits in their dreams. But cats know how to curl in a ball or stretch upside down and breathe in perfect peace for hours on end.

It is not uncommon to leave the house and come back several hours later to find my cat in the same sleepy position in which I left him. Just watching his fur slowly rise and fall can make me feel less stressed.

The rain may pour outside, the electricity may flash on and off in the house, and the television may blare away the hours, but my cat sleeps through all of it in perfect harmony with himself and the world around him, all he knows of reality.

Lesson Four: Go With The Flow

When I brought home a second cat many years ago, my tomcat’s first response was to run into the bedroom and hide under the bed! As I hauled him out by his back legs and carried him through the house to show him the new member of the family had been isolated for the time being, he even had the temerity to hiss at me.

After I told him he was being silly, he didn’t take long to figure out he still had reign over his domain. Within a few hours, he was sniffing at the door where the new cat was staying. In just a few days, he was so determined to meet the newest member of our family that we decided to take our chances, forget the two week isolation rule for new pets, and opened the bedroom door.

My tomcat didn’t take long to adjust to his new reality. He happily shared his food bowl and water dish, took turns at the bathroom faucet, and even slept within inches of his new buddy.

Despite the seeming closeness of my two pets, when I had to put the second cat to sleep, my tomcat also took this in stride. I never noticed that he even looked for his former housemate. If anything, I might go so far as to say that he is happier being the only cat in the house.

No matter if his household changes or he has to spend a few days at the vet’s, this cat manages to go with the flow. Because he knows that he has very limited control over what happens to him, he takes his situation at face value. He adjusts moment to moment. What else, after all, can he do?

I often think that if I were more like my cat, I would be a better servant of my God. God encourages me to ask for anything I desire that would please Him, assuring me that He will answer my request. He tells me that He will take care of my every need for the basics of this life. He makes Himself known to me best when I am still enough to listen for Him. And my relationship with Him is strongest when I face the challenges of this life in full knowledge of His promise to always have my back.

Most importantly, my God loves me enough to let me go, to give me the free will to choose Him. In the end, my devotion to my God is all the stronger because I long to know Him, not because He has made me follow.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a virtual slave to my cat, but I love him all the more because, in his own way, he draws me closer to the Creator who gives us the freedom to choose Him as our Saviour.

May the peace of the cat, and of our awesome God, be with you today and always.

In Christ,
Ramona

Truthfully, 2014 was a long year for me. In fact, there’s a Mac Davis song about our shared hometown in which he laments, “I thought happiness was Lubbock, Texas in my rearview mirror . . . .” When I think about this past year, I feel like happiness is 2014 in my rearview mirror.

But, just as Davis concludes that “happiness is Lubbock, Texas growing nearer and dearer,” I suppose there are actually quite a few lessons I have learned along the bumpy road that was this past year that I should carry forward into 2015. For what the thoughts are worth, here they are:

Lesson 1: This isn’t a contest–life is hard for everybody.

I have been battling a lot of muscle pain that just keeps getting worse over the last several years. I take supplements, go to alternative therapies, and have even resorted to prescription medications. Finally, this year I ruled out everything except what it turned out to be, which is fibromyalgia. This diagnosis goes along nicely with my hypothyroidism, polycystic ovary syndrome, generalized anxiety disorder, and clinical depression.

Despite facing physical and mental difficulties most of my life, I have always proceeded under the reality that I don’t have to look very far to find somebody who is facing something even more difficult. Two of my relatives are currently under treatment for cancer. A number of people in my Bible class lost loved ones after long illnesses and even unexpectedly this past year.

But this year, I had to learn to quit looking at life as a contest. In other words, I had to go ahead and admit that I had my own problems to face, and it was OK to feel a little sorry for myself about that every once in a while. I gave myself permission to have a bad day now and then instead of comparing myself to how other people seem to be handling their challenges and berating myself for not doing more.

I don’t mean that I took this lesson as an excuse to be lazy. After all, God wants us to take pleasure in the work that we do. He wants us to face life’s challenges to learn perseverance and build our character and relationship with Him. But I am learning to pay more attention to what I feel like, both physically and mentally, before I decide the next thing to do each day.

Lesson 2: Learning that cliches can be true hurts

Starting in June of 2013, my female Maine Coon began to have issues. After an expensive visit or two to the vet, we discovered that she was suffering from an enlarged colon, apparently a pretty common problem for a 14-year-old cat of her type.

We changed her diet, added probiotics and other supplements to her daily routine, put up with smells no one wants to know about, and started having to place adult diaper pads in special places all over the house. One evening in March, it became apparent that we were keeping our little darling alive for ourselves more than for the cat. The next morning, the vet agreed. I held her as the needle went in.

Now, if you know me, you know that I do a lot of complaining about the trouble it is to have my cats and how I was looking forward to not having to do all this work for such little payback (cats are not cuddlers, at least not mine). In my defense, I always qualified my grumbling by saying I loved my cats.

But, it wasn’t until I had to say goodbye to Mitzi, the one cat who actually would sit in my lap, that I realized what it means when people warn you not to take things for granted. I have taken the rest of this year to get over it. I’ve bought a half dozen stuffed animal “replacements.” I’m just a little ashamed to admit that I even take one of them with me on long drives. Somehow, holding the stuffed animal seems to help a little bit.

I still have one male cat to care for. He sometimes deigns to sleep between my legs at night so I can’t move. He will even sit in the middle of the living room floor to keep an eye on me during the evening hours. But he is my husband’s cat.

In case you want to tell me to just get it over with and go find another cat or dog, I am determined not to do so. It took a while for me to adjust to even having animals. Being an anxious person, I worried about the silliest things. What my cats have taught me is another post-worth of lessons. But, I do not intend to repeat the experience again for a long, long while.

Lesson 3: Even if it’s only a small thing that seems like nothing, still do something when it comes to your relationships with other people

As I mentioned earlier, a couple of my relatives have been in major battles against cancer this year. Both of them live far away, and I have quite a few responsibilities of my own, as well as my health issues, so there really wasn’t much that I could physically do for them.

Of course, I pray and also have added them to my Bible class and Life Group’s prayer lists. But another thing I knew I could do was send cards on a semi-regular basis. Since I am a writer, it is a fun challenge for me to write something entertaining, caring, or hopeful in a card and send it off.

Because I had decided to do this, I added my 91-year-old Grandma to my card list. (Being related to me, she isn’t much for talking on the phone.) While I was at it, I dropped cards in the mail to people from church who were having difficult times.

Maybe I’ve only sent out a little over a dozen cards in total (I haven’t kept count), but each person has thanked me. Being a post office kid, I know as well as anyone how much fun it can be to get a piece of mail that isn’t a bill or bad news.

My little something had another effect. It made me feel better about myself during a year when I wasn’t feeling too swift about much of anything.

Lesson 4: Learn when to say when

Especially now that I know I have fibromyalgia, I understand the importance of trying to pay attention to what my body is telling me. Some days, I may need to do less than I do on other days. If I get better at this, hopefully I will be in less pain.

Learning to say when will also help me get more control over my anxiety instead of having to rely on prescription medication. The when here is knowing when to stop the obsessive thinking about problems that are not problems, business that isn’t my business, and negative thoughts about myself and others that are incorrect or not my place to have.

Lesson 5: Everyone has a perspective

One of the good things that occurred this past year was the improvement in my ability to understand that everyone has a different perspective on what happens in their world. Trying to see things through the eyes of somebody else is one of my most difficult challenges.

Still, I think that I am getting better at just listening to what other people have to say without trying to think up an argument against their ideas. Hopefully, I am making more room in my brain for these different ways of looking at the world.

When you have to slow down because your body is refusing to cooperate with where your mind wants to go, it is surprising how many real possibilities finally get to stand out in your brain. There is room for God to get His message through to you when you give Him more silences in a day.

Lesson 6: Problems eventually work themselves out

Here’s the lesson I keep having to learn over and over and over again. Did I mention I am a natural at worrying? That means I am actively looking for problems that need solving all of the time. It is exhausting work, and a job that no one has given me except myself.

Even God doesn’t want this burden for me. Over and over in my life, He proves to me that He is in control. Over and over I go back to acting as if that somehow makes no difference. I will come up with a solution, even if it means I tie myself up in knots trying to think my way out of the box I have placed myself in!

This past year, I had a leak on a fairly new roof (one of my big fears). It got fixed. The year before that, I had a termite infestation. Again, it did no discernible damage, and I now have treatment baits all over my house to guard against future attacks. When I first moved into my house more than a dozen years ago, it took less than six months for the foundation to shift (another of my biggest fears). A dozen years later, the latest checks on the foundation show that it is still doing well.

In other words, just like my Dad has been telling me since I was knee-high to a grasshopper–85% of the things I worry about never happen, and the 15% that do are never as bad as I think they will be.

2014 was one of those years that proved that bad things could happen, and I could survive anyway–not because of anything special about me, but because God is on my side. Just as He gave His only begotten Son for me, He did the same for you.

And He is always there for ALL of us. We just need to ask.

Here’s to a less challenging 2015. I could do with a little fewer lessons in perseverance, but I will lean on God and accept, as always, that His will be done.

In Christ,
Ramona