Feline Disorientation
The cat is disoriented. I suppose one could argue that that really isn’t anything new. Disorientation seems to be a normal feline state. I remember many years ago in the kid phase of my life that our family had a kitten that mastered the art of walking backwards before it became proficient in walking forward. We would watch the silly beast proceed (or would that be recede?) across the room until she backed into something. (What can I say? It was the 50s and I was easily entertained.)
But I digress. The current source of disorientation is missing furniture. A sofa and chair disappeared to be reupholstered a couple of days ago while the cat was sleeping. Somewhere around 80% of the cat’s life is spent sleeping, a fact that occasionally makes me jealous. The other 20% is mainly occupied with eating, playing, meowing, and disgorging hair balls at inopportune times and places. When the cat awoke and headed for food, she immediately noticed the missing furniture, forgot about eating (I think she has feline ADD) and tried to meow the furniture back into existence. She does not understand why this plan did not work.
Lyle Schaller in one of his books likens the smallest American church congregations to cats. They are highly independent, cute one on one, have great difficulty with change, and hiss and scratch in groups. Some of my friends who pastor cat congregations know what Schaller is talking about; have you ever tried to baptize a cat? The basic problem is that cats by nature resist submission. They believe that they are the center of the universe. Sadly, the people that cats own often reinforce that belief.
The furniture will be back, the cat will recover, and the optimist in me hopes that she will resist scratching the new upholstery. Meanwhile, she is disoriented, and though she doesn’t like it, that might be a good thing.
Lord, please keep me from being too much like the cat.
