This morning I was sitting here in the guest room typing a reply to an email. I looked over my shoulder and saw our cat, Rusty, curled up asleep on the red couch next to me. I hadn’t seen him silently enter the room, but there he was – my shadow. He seems to have an “antenna” tuned in to me. He often looks like he is sound asleep, but if I stand up to leave the room, he jumps down from his current “perch” and pads along behind me.
He jumps on the counter to supervise me while I wash dishes, climbing into the sink for a drink out of the faucet. He sprawls right in the middle of the mess in my studio while I am creating something. Last week while I was making a book for Emily’s birthday, he reduced me to giggles. There he was all curled up in the middle of a huge assortment of yarn – all colors, textures, and thicknesses. What kind of self-respecting cat is content to sleep in the presence of so much yarn? He just wanted to be with me.
If I go out in the backyard to eat my breakfast, he curls up in the shade at my feet. If I am getting ready for the day, he stands on the counter quizzically watching me put on makeup. If I am reading in bed, he is curled up on the comforter wadded up down by my feet. He is always THERE!
God tapped me on the shoulder this morning when I turned and saw Rusty on the red couch. He said, “You don’t always hear me, or see me, but I’m always here. I’m HERE. You are never alone.”
Rusty will meow loudly when he is in distress, but the sound he makes most often is a rolled chirping with a question mark at the end. When I have left a room, a few minutes later I can hear Rusty padding down the hallway “chirping” out the question, “Where did you go?” God is like that. He seeks us out. If we have wandered away, He comes looking for us.
There are still other ways He reveals himself through my feisty orange and white cat. Often, while in the middle of working on a project, Rusty decides it’s time for me to play with him. This usually involves throwing one of his jingly balls so he can play fetch (he chases the ball, picks it up in his teeth while meowing at the same time, and brings it to me where he drops it at my feet so I can throw it again). Sometimes it means getting out his purple leash and twirling it so he can leap up to grab it or chase after it. When he is in one of those moods, he really doesn’t care if I am in the middle of some “important” task. He wants me to pay attention to him, and he will not leave me alone until I stop what I am doing and play with him. If I persist in ignoring him, he jumps onto a nearby surface and looks for something, anything, to push off onto the floor. I’ve grabbed glasses full of water, precious figurines, cell phones, and cameras just in the nick of time on more than one occasion. Although God is patient, there are times when He wants me to pay attention to Him. He finds ways to distract me from what I am doing what seems so important to me at the time, because He wants me to just spend time with Him.
Sometimes Rusty makes me laugh out loud. He jumps straight up in the air about three feet and then tears through the house. He bats his little ball around all over the back patio until he finally knocks it into the pool. Then he leans precariously over the edge of the pool so all you can see are his back haunches and tail, to fish the ball out with his extended claws. He launches himself at the top of his favorite rust-colored rocking chair, setting it swinging and then leaps from the top of it, nearly knocking it over. He climbs to the top of the fridge and bats as me as I walk by. God startles me back into the present like this sometimes, too. He wakes me up with a song about his glory playing in my head. He startles me with a spectacular sunset. He prods me into doing something I never thought I’d have the courage to do. He encourages me with an unexpected email from a friend. He presses his fingerprints into my days so I can see them later when the angle of the sun is just right, or when I stop long enough to notice.
When I returned from swimming today at noon, I opened the front door and Rusty was sitting there on the dining room carpet looking at me. From the way he stood, yawned and stretched, it was apparent that he had planted himself there when we went out the front door and was waiting for our return. He serves as a reminder that God, too, waits patiently for me to return to him, when I have been off on one of my tangents.
I headed into the bathroom to take a shower. I put the sage colored bathmat on the floor and pulled the shower curtain closed. Every time I take a shower – every single time – I pull back the shower curtain to grab my towel and find Rusty sitting there looking at me. I never feel embarrassed to be naked in front of him – it just warms my heart that he has come looking for me. Unlike Adam and Eve in the garden when God came looking for them after they had sinned, I do not have to feel ashamed about being naked in front of God, either. He knows me inside and out and He loves me anyway. I don’t have to cower in front of him, or try to hide my glaring flaws, because Jesus has clothed me with his righteousness. Now, that is freedom!
On occasion, Rusty will disappear for a while, out exploring the neighborhood and charming the neighbors (who are all fattening him up!). His absence awakens my curiosity and I go looking for him to see what he is up to. God also draws me out of myself and bids me to come out into the world to see what he is up to.
One thing cats do better than any other creature, is sleep. There is no better picture of utter contentment and rest than a cat curled up in a cozy patch of sunlight. God calls me, too, to rest, to stop my frantic pace and just “be.” He gently reminds me that sometimes the most spiritual thing I can do is take a nap.
Today I am thankful for my furry friend on the red couch. He not only delights my heart but also points my heart toward the One who delights in me. What a gift!
