Every creature of God is good…—I Timothy 4:4
I’ve always thought the world was divided into cat people and dog people. Carol was one of the former, and I was definitely one of the latter. I loved big dogs with wagging tails, and she loved furry, purring kittens—a standoff. The best solution for twenty years of marriage was that we owned neither dog nor cat.
Then our friend Mary Alice rescued an eight-month-old kitten on a subway platform in Harlem. “He’s very pretty,” she told Carol. “Long, fluffy, gray hair with neat white paws.” The problem was that Mary Alice couldn’t keep him. Would we be interested?
“No,” I said. “I don’t want some beast meowing around the house, sitting in my lap when I’m trying to work, begging to be petted.”
“Mary Alice asked if we could just take him for a couple nights until she finds a home for him.”
“I suppose so.”
Can you guess the rest of the story? The cat—christened Fred because he was found on Frederick Douglass Boulevard—has become my great pal. Delighted, I wake up to Fred licking my ear. I eat breakfast with him at my feet. When I come home at night, he’s the first one to greet me. “Meow, meow,” he says. Play with me! And I do.
The scariest thought is if I had clung to my preconceived notions, I would never have known the pleasures of working at the computer with a purring cat in my lap. All I needed was a little nudge.
Now I wonder, though, what would Carol—and Fred—think of adding a mutt to our ménage?
Open my eyes, Lord, to the beauty of all Your creatures.
