Faith | His cat’s angry paws had him pausing in prayer

Valuable spiritual lessons can be learned when living with a pet, as I recently learned after upsetting our pet cat Zoey.

Zoey is a Maine Coon, young, full of energy, and a joy to have around the home. She loves to travel with my wife and I when we head out to the wilderness with our RV trailer. She hangs out in the camper, watches wildlife from the windows, and greets us at the door when we return from a hike.

One late afternoon, after returning from a long trek, I pull out my laptop to answer emails that piled up during the day. Zoey wants my attention, which I give her for a few minutes, but cut our time short so I can finish my work.

Zoey is not pleased.

She is brushing up against me, walking across my keyboard, and head butting the screen on my laptop demanding more attention.

I’m losing my patience.

For a moment, she perches on the other side of my screen, staring directly at me. I lightly blow in her face, hoping she turns away and leaves me alone.

In the crack of an instant, her right paw flings over the top of the screen and scrapes me down the front of my face, nails fully extended.

I am stunned. Shocked. I can’t believe she scraped my face with her nails.

I am grateful to have my eyes intact, but the long stinging marks I felt on my face were scary. I react with anger, and the anger feels justified. But I quickly realize that anger is not going to help.

I knew from experience with spiritual healing that anger makes problems worse, rather than better. If the marks were to heal fast, I needed to let the anger go and get into a peaceful, spiritually inspired state of mind as fast as possible, I knew.

I reach out to God for help. A favorite verse from the Bible pops into thought. “’I will restore health to you and heal you of your wounds,’ says the Lord” (Jer. 30:17, NKJV).

My wounds were deeper than facial. They were emotional. I was deeply wounded that our beloved cat did this to me.

From the evidence on my face, I fear lifetime scars.

As I continue to pray, I accept that I need to forgive Zoey completely. Blowing in her face was rude, and she reacted out of animal instinct to tell me she didn’t like it. I should have found a nicer way to let her know she was loved, but I needed to get my work done, I readily admit.

I see that Zoey’s desire for loving attention is not a bad desire. She spent a day in the camper alone. My desire to get my work done is not a bad desire either. What is needed, I realize, is a more expansive understanding of how there is enough love to go around for both of us.

“God is love” (I John 4:8), the Bible teaches. The love of God is not in short supply or limited at times. It’s infinite, for God is infinite! As a child of God, I had infinite love coming from God to share with Zoey.

Zoey is not my enemy, I see. Impatience was our common enemy. With unlimited love coming from God to share, we didn’t need to be impatient with each other. We could be more understanding and thoughtful with one another and learn more patience.

Infinite love finds a way, I decide.

Wanting to see more love flowing between us, it becomes easy to forgive Zoey. A calm peace settles in. I’m not afraid anymore. I am confident that if there is no mark in my thinking about what happened, the marks on my face would vanish too. And as time proves, they were gone in a couple of days, with no scars. I am grateful.

Zoey and I are still best friends and continue to learn lessons in love that bless us both.

Evan Mehlenbacher is a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science in Richland, and a member of the Christian Science Church in Pasco. Questions and comments should be directed to editor Lucy Luginbill in care of the Tri-City Herald newsroom, 4253 W. 24th Avenue, Kennewick, WA 99338. Or email lluginbill@tricityherald.com.