MY LOUSY WORLD: The proverbial Bible cat

Posted 6/26/14

After losing my 20-year-old cat Ponce weeks ago and my best buddy ever, Trinity last fall, I’m down to one dog and four cats. You’d think the lesser number would have my house smelling fresher, but nope, it’s still known as “Musty Manor” …

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MY LOUSY WORLD: The proverbial Bible cat

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And the cats vs. dogs debate rages on. I’m one of the few who can truly say I feel strongly both ways with no clear preference. Dogs and cats combine (preferably curled up together on the couch) symbiotically to form God’s greatest gift to mankind.

After losing my 20-year-old cat Ponce weeks ago and my best buddy ever, Trinity last fall, I’m down to one dog and four cats. You’d think the lesser number would have my house smelling fresher, but nope, it’s still known as “Musty Manor” around here. But a rose by any other name smells just as sweet.

The universal dogs vs. cats debate will never be settled, because both are competing under one severe disadvantage that prevents a clear-cut winner.

For cats, it’s facial expression. No matter how hard a cat may try, they will never look happy or content; the design of the mouth — frozen into a perpetual upside-down V — makes it physiologically impossible to produce even a reasonable facsimile of a smile. And you know what they say: Smile and the world smiles with you; scowl (even while purring) and you scowl alone.

It’s sad since they have every reason to smile — sleeping all day and never having to flush. If they were physically able, your cat would be incessantly grinning like the cat that ate the canary, (only possible in cartoons). A dog’s face is designed to smile, so they’re walking around looking giddy and giving you the impression they’re eternally amused and content.

But dogs are at a disadvantage in the breed war because they’re not provided litterboxes like their self-bathing, hygienic counterparts. Thus, we often step in their “scat,” for lack of a sweeter term. I love dogs, but I’ve went splat in more scat than I can shake a bat at, and it’s never pleasant. I’ve thrown away shoes rather than tackle that tedious chore.

Don’t get me wrong, neither is cleaning litterboxes pleasant, especially when you carry your cell phone in a shirt pocket as I do. Believe me, after fishing it out of that mess, it takes all the fun out of answering the phone. So a cat can’t smile and a dog can’t clump — thus the dead heat.

But I have one extra-special kitty I’d be remiss not to mention her resume. If I might wax Biblical for just a moment, Hebrews says, “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing, some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”

My youngest, a 10-year-old “kitten” named Princess, is one of those that never gets cat-big and forever plays like a kitten. When a friend had a litter she couldn’t keep, I fell in love with the gorgeous gal and her powder-brown neck, nose and ears.

Her colors are a dazzling combination I’d never seen before. Even with her deceptive scowl she was impossible not to love.

Princess became a little sister to my four adult cats, and nine years later, she’s still the little sister, with the bigger cats seeming to look upon her as amusing and totally harmless, (much like me at an orgy). But something odd began happening recently I can’t explain. I’ve begun doing a private Bible study early in my day before the noise of the world leads me astray. One morning when I opened the Bible, Princess came stampeding down the steps from upstairs at breakneck speed. With her diminutive squeaky meow, she planted herself on the open pages and began to purr loudly.

Not an earthshaking occurrence — she was gonna come down sometime and it happened to be when I opened my Bible. But the next day it happened again and nearly every day since. She might be in the cool of the unfinished basement for hours, but the minute I begin a prayer, she comes running and is immediately on my lap or the couch arm purring.

I’m a Christian, but not an overtly religious one, and I don’t go around seeing miracles behind every bush and in every litterbox. But something strange is going on here. My “Bible Kitty” never misses a prayer or Bible time and she wastes no time in arriving — always on a dead run.

Soon after my sister Wanda died in ’05, her only son got married at his wife’s family’s beachfront, Virginia mansion where my elderly, grieving mother was seated on a couch. A black cat no one had ever seen before wandered in an open door and first went to my brother-in-law for a minute, then directly to my mother’s lap, ignoring everyone else.

It was so odd that no one shooed away this stranger that continued to dote on my heartbroken mother. From everything I’ve heard, no one has seen this cat before or since. Now, I don’t know where that cat came from or why the obsessive interest in my mother.

And I have no idea why Princess is obsessively fascinated with anything God. Heck, God spelled backwards isn’t cat; it’s dog. But maybe … just maybe when we rescue or save an animal in distress, we might be entertaining an angel without even knowing it.

As for my sweet old dog Trina, when she sees Princess hugging my Bible, she can’t help but smile. And then she usually poops — right where she knows I’m gonna be stepping.

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