It was the bitter cold of this past winter, and things had gotten pretty desperate. It had been weeks; was she even still alive? Was she injured and unable to respond? Or was she simply being obnoxious and not returning our calls?
This kind of thing is the exact reason I did not want a cat to begin with.
I suppose I should backtrack just a bit and explain that, technically, this was my daughter’s cat and, therefore, my daughter’s problem. She has always been a fantastic child, obedient, smart and thoughtful of others. For years, she had wanted a cat, and I had steadfastly refused, seeing dogs as a much more sensible option in pets. But finally, my dear bride reminded me of how good of a kid she had always been and that we would likely have her with us for only a few more years.
And so it was that I put out some discreet feelers about kittens. An old friend contacted me pretty quickly, showed me some pictures, and I immediately said, “The white one.” The big blue eyes were captivating in that fluffy white face, and I knew that Karis would love her.
When we picked the kids up from school that day, I told them we had an errand to run before we went home. That errand took us to my friend’s house. I left everyone in the car and told them I would be right back. When I came back, I opened her door and plopped the little fluff ball into her lap, and she immediately started crying. That’s when I knew I had won “Dad of the Year” yet again.
It did not take Duchess long to settle in on our front porch. It also did not take long for me to give her a more suitable nickname: Fluffy McFluffbutt. Ironically, and much to my daughter’s chagrin, it also did not take the cat long to decide that I was her primary human.
Fast-forward to last winter. There had been a good bit of upheaval in our lives on the dog front; we had lost our lab, the cat’s favorite friend, and my son had then gotten a German shepherd pup. After a few hisses and swats, she grudgingly accepted the new dog. But then my daughter came home with a stray dog that some despicable cretin dropped off in the road right in front of her, speeding away and leaving the poor dog behind.
To say that the cat was displeased would be an understatement; she was utterly hiss-terical. She promptly pulled a disappearing act, staying gone for several days. Out where we live, that is fatal for a small critter. The coyotes have a name for such: lunch. I ended up finding her in my barn and carrying her back to the porch. We fed her tuna and loved on her to get her reestablished in the idea that home was her best option.
And then she ran away again. We knew she, or at least her air tag, was still nearby because it would ping every now and again. But no matter how many times we went out looking and calling, we could not find her, she would not come, and we knew she was not going to survive if something did not change. So late on a Saturday night, I set a cage trap on the front porch, baited it with tuna and then went to bed.
Early the next morning, Dana woke me up: “Kitty is in the trap!” I jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes and went out to see.
Sure enough, our flighty fat fluff ball was squeezed into that cage without a centimeter to spare anywhere; she looked like cubed cat. “You brought this on yourself,” I said calmly, to which she responded with a disgusted “Mrreoeoeowr!”
So now we have a cat in my basement gym. She has settled in nicely, apparently reasoning that she is now with creatures more in line with her sophistication level. She has climate control, constant food and water, a tower play set/bed combination and, since I put in a kitty door, access to the garage as well. Between the gym and garage, her home is twice the square footage of the home we five humans used to live in before we moved to our current location.
But we had to trap her to do it. We would have voluntarily cared for her forever, giving her all the best, but she made that impossible. So we had to put her in the most uncomfortable position imaginable for her own good. And this, all of it, makes me wonder how often God feels the same way about us. How often does he sit on his throne and ask a question that he already knows the answer to, namely, “Why do they always have to do things the hard way?” How often in my own life have I gotten bent out of shape over some new circumstance and removed myself from the place of God’s greatest possible blessings, even placing myself in needless danger?
I can think of some young adults right now who have done the same. Everyone with an ounce of sense can see how much they are ruining themselves and their future; they themselves are the only ones seemingly oblivious to that fact. Oh, how much better off every person would always be to willingly follow the God who made them, loves them and died for them. Instead, we humans seem to always go the way of the psalmist and come to this point: “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes” (Psalm 119:71).
We can do things the easy way or the hard way. I vote for the easy way.
Bo Wagner is pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, North Carolina, a widely traveled evangelist and the author of several books available on Amazon and at wordofhismouth.com. Email him at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.