A little after 11:00am today, our doorbell rang, which is slightly unusual in our neighborhood. Our new neighbor girls were hovered in the bushes by our porch. Before I could make it completely out the door, I realized that there was a small kitten caught in the thicket of my sage bush. After shooing the dogs away, I gently picked up the cat. Immediately I could tell that something was not right. The kitten kind of lurched and there was a smell so rancid I almost gagged. That is when I saw that the poor kitten had a wound so deep and infected that the bone was showing.
Thinking quickly and trying not to puke, I took the kitten to my garage, forbade the children from entering and went in to get my husband. I made a small bowl of food for the little critter and fed it while my husband got our cat carrier out of storage.
The children were clamoring around the door but I just didn’t want them to have exposure to this horrible wound. My son, is so sensitive to injured and sick animals, I knew that he would be devastated. I called our vet, who advised me to bring it down and pay $60 to have it euthenized. Then I called another local vet and they said to take it to the shelter.
Meanwhile, the little cat was so weak, it just laid down on the towel I had on the floor. It wasn’t crying or hiding or doing anything that a normal feral cat would do. I called the shelter and the sweet woman said to just bring the kitten in. We loaded the carrier into the car, vented the windows and headed off.
While we were driving, Eph was asking me a zillion questions about the cat. I never want to be dishonest with him and so I explained that we were taking the cat to a special hospital for stray cats. I tried to explain to him what it meant to let something suffer and how we didn’t want to do that to the poor kitten.
This is such a enormous concept for a little one. We have talked about how Jesus suffered on the cross. We have talked about how our old cat, was suffering but unless you have felt intense pain, it is hard to wrap your mind about something or someone elses suffering. The idea that this cat had a huge gaping wound that smelled worst than week old eggs just could not penetrate his innocent mind. Tears flowed pretty easily as we talked about how sometimes it is kind and good to put an animal down to keep it from suffering.
When we arrived at the shelter and started to get the kitten out, Eph just started bawling. He was almost to the point of hyperventalating as we finally made it into the office. The woman spoke so kindly to us as we filled out paperwork. She let Eph choose which blanket to put into the carrier. He chose the monkey one because it “looked happy.” She swiftly moved the cat from our carrier to theirs as Eph asked her what would happen. She never once lied to him. She told him that they would make him comfortable. That he would be seen by the doctors and that they would take good care of the little cat.
As we stood in the parking lot, he snuggled up on me and just cried huge tears. He was so broken and hurt over the sweet little kitten. I could barely keep my own tears from overtaking me. I asked him if he wanted to pray and he did. We asked that God take good care of his creatures and that we hoped the kitten would not suffer any longer.
While I am sad that our family had to deal with such an unpleasent experience, I realized that the lesson here today is about how sometimes we are the cat in the thicket. We are suffering and we need something more powerful and strong than we are to help us through our suffering. Or that at other times, no matter how much we explain something to our children, they just won’t fully understand, and that is ok. It might be better that they don’t.
Romans 8:18:
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
