As I am continuing to update (i.e.: fixing grammar and spelling errors) and posting old blog posts to the new site, here is the first in the series of faith observations from studying cats. I thank God that He has chosen to heal me from my allergies to cats lest I’d never had these observations at the ready. This post is originally from May 22, 2007. This is the first post of my ongoing posts on cats. I hope that you enjoy it.
About a year or so ago, I mentioned to the spouse how I found it interesting how close the word “curious” was to the Greek word for ‘the Lord,’ Kurios and as is the case with most things between us, things can get a little punny or just plain silly. (Just gotta love those homonyms; I mean what else are they good for besides making English a very difficult language to learn.) However, in the silliness of the moment, several really deep spiritual truths about our nature and relationship with the Lord came out.
For example the Scriptural verse “No man comes to God save the Spirit draws them” morphed into “no one curious comes to save the Kurios draws them.” Think about it for a moment. If God didn’t put His Spirit in us to some degree, no matter how small, we wouldn’t be interested in Him at all. And if we weren’t interested, our curiosity would never be peaked to go find or seek out more about Him. The Kurios in us makes us curious to find Him and thus become kurikkon or ‘the Lord’s’ when we do. “Curious about Kurios,” that’s what we all are. And from this, you can connect the dots on how this website’s domain name came to be.
We have this love-hate relationship with cats and—with no offense to the cat-lovers who stumbled across this—I have oft said the cats were the spawn of Satan, partly because of their sanitary habits and propensity for jumping on top of kitchen counters, but mostly because I’m allergic to them and they all know it and every single one of them likes to hang out around our house when it’s allergy season. Now amongst the puns that were flying back and forth, my husband suddenly pops up with, “I’ve got proof that cats are evil. Kurios-ity killed the cat,” which he went on to translate as meaning that the Lord doesn’t like them because they’re evil and should be killed just like the old man in us. They are such users.”
Suddenly, the light bulb in my little brain came on with a flash of revelation and I told him, “Hey, wait a moment I think you’re onto something!” From this point, we both began to draw analogies from traditional and stereotypical feline behavior and related it to our relationship with God.
Now then… for the curious in our midst and for the “official” record, at the time this page was started, we had been adopted by three of the local feral cats about six months prior (which is another story for another day), and thus have been compelled to feed and water them on a daily basis and in exchange, they graciously allowed their names to be used as the examples in this little babbling of mine. Little did we realize that the Almighty was going to gift us with a constant, living example of our brilliant insight on our literal doorstep two months later. His name is Cassidy and there’ll more on him later.
First, we’ll recap the basics and then get a bit more personal to cover the specifics using Cassidy and his homies as our examples…or some combination of them.
1. Cats are the ultimate user. They take our food, our water, and invade our hearts and homes but only on their terms and when they have a need. At best, they tolerate us silly humans but usually choose to ignore us except at suppertime. At this point I could draw on my many years of watching the Gilmore Girls and supplement this analogy by expounding on the Lorelai-Luke relationship and, but that would make Lorelai a cat and I find that way too disturbing to ponder more than I have. However, I digress.
All that we have comes from God and we willingly and eagerly take it and only come to Him when we have a need. We show our tolerance of Him by occasionally attending church but usually choose to ignore Him.
2. Cats are notoriously known for getting themselves stuck in trees, out on a limb with no plausible way of escape without being rescued and then they get annoyed with us when we rescue them.
We are notorious for getting ourselves stuck out on that proverbial limb of our own making with no way of escape. Then when God intervenes on our behalf and provides a way of escape we get annoyed with Him as the way of escape provided isn’t what we think it should have been.
3. Cats can easily spend hours laying around doing nothing more than grooming themselves and are somewhat oblivious to their surroundings. They spend endless hours either preening themselves or sleeping.
We too spend hours upon hours focused on nothing other than the care of self with seldom a nod to God.
Now let’s look at our clowder or colony of feral cats, which we refer to as “the entourage,” to expand this further. Thanks be to Wikipedia to learn that a group of house cats is called a “clowder.” Who knew?
“Momma” — she is a uniquely patterned calico/mackerel cat, mostly white with the most interesting splashes of spots of stripes and spots that one cat could have. It’s almost like God took out His paint box and went splat. She is the matriarch, the grandmother of this colony of cats. She is vocal about her needs; acts sincerely grateful for the small amounts of food and water we give out and even seems to enjoy the occasional scratch to the shoulders. She trusts us, to a point but is not willing to make the full commitment to move in and become a full-fledged pet.
How like us this cat is? We see and know that the Lord is good and that there is no other way but…. But for whatever the reason we’re unwilling or unable to make the commitment. I lost a girlfriend for this reason. She had listened to the teaching, and it made sense and she knew that Christianity was the only way to go too, but she could not make the leap of faith and leave Judaism behind. Why? We had an honest and close enough relationship I bluntly asked her and she explained equal candor. She said couldn’t make that leap because she had seen the trials and tribulation in my life because of my faith and knew she “couldn’t handle it.” The last I heard from her was that her marriage ended in an ugly divorce, she had given up on her Jewish heritage and gone the way of the mother goddess. Essentially, everything she feared came upon her. The calling of God is without repentance or recall… so when you hear His voice, seize the opportunity.
As a side note regarding Momma, we were recently informed that she is alleged to be the pet of one of our neighbors. Besides the humorous fact, that said “pet” is allegedly fixed and one of her grandsons is now our four-legged son and we’ve watched at least four litters of kittens come and go in the nearly two years we’ve been tending to her and her offspring and, and, and…. we were accused of trying to steal her just like they do in the Philippines. Huh? People steal cats? …in the Philippines? You mean to tell me that there’s something wrong with putting water out so animals don’t die from dehydration in the summer … because like ya’ know dude, we live in the desert where it can get to be over 100 degrees nearly six months of the year? Methinks it’s analogous to giving someone a cup of cold water in Jesus’ name.
Anyways, in the midst of the ranting and railing, the thought occurred to me how like the enemy, Satan, to raise his head and start to cause problems for us when we attempt to move out of his domain and go with God.
“Vanna” — she was similarly colored and patterned as Momma, just a bit more splotchy. She sheepishly accepted what was given to her, but never trusted us enough to let us touch her. She got her name because she got herself trapped underneath our house for almost a week, we called her “Ms. Van Trapp Kat” (the Sound of Music had just been on TV at the time) which was later shortened to Vanna.
Next comes “Doofus.” She is a silver tabby with sea-green eyes and yes, she is aptly named. Not only does she exhibit not too bright behavior such as running down the driveway or the middle of our little road to greet us, but she will stop and sit in the middle of the roadway and thus block our way and simultaneously place herself directly in harm’s way. (I did some googling around on cats and came across some major cat websites that said this is one of the quirky traits of the American Standard breed housecats …running into the on-coming cars of their humans is a “quirk”? *shaking head*)
And all for what? Doofus is the personification of her name spelled backward “su food.” She is solely in it for the kibble, and she will go out of her way to make sure that no one else gets this “free gift” before she does. She is unflappable in her determination of satisfying her fleshly needs without even a meow of thanks. (Also typical cat behavior or so I’ve read.)
How like so many of us who will only go to church for the conveniences or social programs that fit our needs, or worse, only attend out of a false sense of obligation so our children can attend their private school or get inexpensive daycare.
When Jesus called His disciples, He said “Follow me.” He didn’t say follow me or little Joseph can’t attend the preschool. He didn’t say follow me and you can get married in our beautiful stained-glass cathedral. He just said, “Follow me.” And to those who said okay, but I have to do this first…. He said “Hasta la vista.” When God puts a call on our lives and we respond, He expects us to put away self and put Him first not “Thanks for the eternal salvation, God. I’ll be checking back in when I need something from you.”
And now our four-legged son, Cassidy… He is a solid ten-plus pound silver tabby with amber-colored eyes. He looks exactly like his mother, Doofus, and when he breaches containment the only way to tell him apart from her is eye color. He is generally a loving, friendly cat, but because of the foundation of his relationship with us, he is a jealous little boy who can go from “Mr. Snuggles” to “Mr. Grumpy-pants” faster than a spoiled toddler can cry at nap time. (Just ask his “brothers” Minx and Obi-wan … who are yet another story. Then there’s itty-bitty Mishka, who is yet another story. I’m married to a cat whisperer.)
God literally placed him and his homies on our doorstep and knowing that I’m a sucker for cuteness in tiny packages, He made sure that the runt of the litter was the cutest one of the bunch. The human/cat bond was made very early on in Cassidy’s life. He was 2 weeks old when I first picked him up and loved him — he was one of the tiny kittens referenced in my blog entry “…and God sent me kittens”.
Cassidy was a feral rescue, and he truly was a rescue. The microcolony of cats that he was borne into has a shared eye infection that they’ve been passing back and forth to each other for as long as I can remember. One night my husband brought Cassidy in to clean his eyes and give him a bath because he was so dusty, and he realized that something was very wrong and off they went to the animal ER. Our poor little beastie had a severe upper respiratory infection and quite literally had more than one paw in the grave. After two and half days of intense veterinary care and more money than I care to admit to, this dog person had a kitten and a very sick one at that.
Over the next couple of weeks, we became his world. We provided him everything: his special food, his meds, a safe and clean environment to recuperate in, and unconditional love. Because of our intense efforts to restore his health and reach out and help him in his hour of need, he displays a level of trust with us that (according to my husband the cat person) is atypical for cats as well as exhibit behavior more akin to dogs than cats. It’s amazing.
In Cassidy, we have demonstrated before our eyes the type of unconditional love and trust that we should have for our Lord, who reached down to pick us up in our hour of need, provides our everything, and loves us unconditionally for our trust.
Now somewhere way back there I’m sure it seemed that I got derailed from my original curiosity about the etymology of our word “curious” and the Greek word for Lord, Kurios. I did some digging and our word “curious” comes from an old French word cure which means ‘to cure.’
I kept pondering this fact for some time, then it dawned on me how appropriate! Where else should we go for healing from all our infirmities, and all our sicknesses and all our diseases but to the Lord, that Great Physician who can set us free from the bonds of sin and sickness? Praise God for His Mercy and His Grace!