The week just before Easter, my pet kitty Toby went missing. After a day of not seeing him, I began to worry, especially as the torrential downpour and spinning tornadoes ripped through the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. I looked throughout the neighborhood. No Toby. My husband searched. No Toby. Six days passed. Still no Toby. On the day after Easter, Toby showed up scarred, bruised and limping. It was clear that he had been through the storm, yet he was back. I don't take it lightly that he showed up the day after Easter, like a Resurrected kitty (and I say that gingerly). He had encountered some of life's toughest storms, yet he pawed his way back home. I don't know what happened to him but it was clear that he had been through a terrible ordeal. His left front paw was being "babied" by him and his left back paw was severely wounded. I suppose if Toby could talk, he would tell me. But I didn't need to verbally hear that something was wrong because the visual was there. It's like when we all go through storms and we come out battered, bruised and beaten up, yet we limp back and tell the story. Many times it doesn't take us telling someone that we've been through a storm, because if the truth be told, those who are closest to us ought to be able to see the visible and emotional scars that we have. Real friends can look at us and tell something is wrong - see it in our face, hear it in our voice. Silent storms can be heard often louder than the boisterous ones that we rush to talk about.
I welcomed Toby in and gave him food and water. I will be honest and say that I was afraid to touch him because I didn't know the severity of his injuries and how he would respond. That didn't mean that I stopped loving him or missed him dearly. I just wanted to be careful. For his sake and mine. Well, that evening as he curled up outside, he must have decided to leave again, because when I went back to look for him, Toby was gone. The minister in me thought about how seasons of life end - friendships, relationships, careers, etc., and that the ones that are meant to be, will be Resurrected, even when we think it is dead and done. Admittedly, I began to think that Toby was dead, that he had been taken up in the storm and not survived it. But he did survive. And when he came back (and left and showed up again), I knew that whatever the reason was that God initially sent him to me, that it had not yet been completely fulfilled. God will always complete his mission no matter how we view the situation.
You see Toby first showed up in my backyard one day, meowing softly with little whiny sounds that reminded me of a baby. I knew that if I fed him, he'd likely stay around - and he did for nearly a year. I wasn't sure why God sent him to me, but I was determined to feed, clothe and provide shelter for Toby. God had placed him in my care..if only for a season.
I took him to the veterinarian and as she examined Toby, she saw that he had been through quite an ordeal. A phrase that one of my long-time friends used to always say, immediately came to mind and seeing especially fitting... literally: "it's been a cat's life on a kitten's journey."
That phrase simply means that you've endured a hard time, a journey meant for someone much older and yet the journey somehow became yours, a journey that takes years to walk, yet you've walked in a hardship of a few months. Well, for Toby, that phrase was literally true. I also learned that in the battle that kitty endured, that maybe it is preparing him for the battle that is ahead.
Kitty was tested and diagnosed with leukemia. I was stunned and cried in the exam room as the veterinarian shared that with me. It doesn't change the way I feel about him. At all. I will still care for him as long as he is entrusted to me. If I allow myself to believe that cats really do have 9 lives, then I believe that kitty will come through this storm, too.
