“So, have you written about it?” my friend Connie asked me Friday night
at the after party for VBS.
I wiped down a table as I shook my head. “I just couldn’t write about
one more sad thing.”
For twenty-two days, my Mama Kitty had been missing. She disappeared
the week when so many tragic things were transpiring.
This feral kitten showed up seven Decembers ago in our back yard at the
same time I was dealing with another painful situation that seemed
irresolvable. I couldn’t change that situation, but I could try to save this
little kitten that faced temperatures in the single digits. I couldn’t catch her, but I built her an insulated homeless shelter with a warming disc in
it. She made it and I eventually was able to tame her, but not before she had
four kittens, about which I wrote many stories.
The feral still apparent in her, she wouldn’t stay inside all the time,
and literally climbed the walls wanting to get out. My vet told me both Mama
Kitty and I would be miserable if I didn’t open the door. She might be gone a
day or two but always returned.
After her disappearance, I called for three weeks every morning and
night, listening, listening. Only crickets answered. There would be no reason to put out
flyers. She’s so stealth, no one would see her grey body as she only moves
at night, and if they did, they wouldn’t be able to catch her.
Jerry tried to console me by saying if cats taught survival lessons,
Mama Kitty would have been the lead instructor. I tried to take comfort in that
thought as well as the truth that God knows when even a sparrow falls to the
ground.
I would have normally cried my
eyes out about her, but with all the profoundly sad events, I put my grief in a
box and sat on it. There was just too much going on. I didn’t think I would
ever write this story.
But my little friend McCoy who loves my cats found out about her
disappearance. Sunday a week ago, he came up to me, “Let’s make a prayer for
Mama Kitty,” he said then bowed his sweet head. “Oh Holy God, please send Mama
Kitty back.”
I have to admit McCoy seemed to have more faith than I did.
Friday night, we got home late.
Jerry got out of the car first. “I hear something,” he said. I jumped
from the car. I heard it too. Faint mewing. “Mama,” I called. She called back
to me with a louder mew. I followed it to a dogwood tree in the front yard
where she had often waited for me to get her. She came down into my arms.
I held her close and took her inside. When I put her down at the food
bowls, she had lost so much weight her sides nearly touched, and she had red
clay dust all over her.
But she was back.
Mama Kitty was back. Then the tears finally came.
I couldn’t help but think of a
word we studied at VBS this week.
Restored―return something to its former condition.
The Varnado animal kingdom has been restored. All members present and
accounted for.
The sense I had Friday night of things being set right was so
wonderful.
In a much, much larger sense, Jesus came to restore.
We sang a song this week at VBS, which told this story. I have it on
replay and probably will for sometime―How Far Love Goes.
Based on Ephesians 3:18-19, God wants us to know “. . . how wide and
long and high and deep. . . “ his love is for us is. How he’s searched, and
gone the greatest lengths to restore us. He wants us to know that we can be
restored, no matter what has gone wrong in our lives, no matter how we may have
strayed from his plan, no matter how we have sinned, no matter how lost and
lonely we are.
He can restore me.
He can restore you.
He can set things right.
Oh, yes, there may be consequences of sin, but those will be bearable
in the context of His amazing love and provision.
Yes, I am a big fan of the word restore.
At this writing, Mama Kitty has made no move toward exiting the house.
I asked McCoy where he thought she had been all this time. He said He thought
she may have tried to call me from a train station. Hmmm, on a train. Of course. Makes sense to me.
How Far Love Goes HERE.
Stories about Mama and her kittens HERE.
How Far Love Goes HERE.
Stories about Mama and her kittens HERE.