Schindler's Cat List - some make the cut

On the farm, when one of our horses broke a leg, out came the rifle, the horse was blindfolded, and the hapless creature was ushered off to horse heaven. Farm life was brutal. I’ve seen people treated the same way lately and I don’t think I can bear much more.
We had cats. In the springtime, the cat population escalated to forty or fifty. My mother, a fanatical cat lover, would collect a gunny sack full of baby cats whose eyes were not even opened and with tears streaming down her face, head for the creek below the barn, put a rock in the sack, throw it in the creek, and run toward the house, where the rest of the day she hibernated, unable to face what she had been forced to do. As I said, life on the farm was brutal. Life on this Planet isn’t a whole heck of a lot better. Every once in a while some kind, deeply caring and sacrificial Christians come around. Cherish them deeply. In fact, CLING to them and never let them go. My dear Charlotte is with me today. She has been reading scripture to me and our imaginations have visited some intriguing places.
Cats. A few of our cats were anointed indoor cats who never once whiffed a breath of winter air, with privileges the outdoor cats did not dream existed. I never did figure out how the royal ones made the cut. The outdoor cats were tough, growing thick hair for the long winter months, snarlingly territorial, staking out their hidey holes, if they were female, for birthing their litter of mewing little babies in late spring. Our hay loft, one of my favorite hiding places when I didn’t want to cut green beans or peel tomatoes for canning, was a virtual high rise apartment complex for kitties. I spent hours in that loft, impatiently waiting for the mama cats to escort her babies, one at a time, into the world of light.
My dad and brothers milked many cows early in the morning and late at dusk. The mama cats showed up for both times, mouths open ready for the men to squirt fresh warm milk down their throats. The milk of one cow, cream and all, was always reserved for the cats. You see, these were working cats. Without them the rats and mice would have eaten any critter that moved. One calico cat named “Cal” spent her entire life guarding a sack of oats, curled up in a ball on the opening to the sack. She died there. On duty.
I’m not a farm horse so nobody has threatened to shoot me, (yet) but yesterday, after weeks of declining strength and frustrating fatigue, Dee, my precious Dee, took me to see my doctor, and he shot me ….with B12. I have been wary of so much emphasis on vitamins, and I have not done myself any favors by clutching my old fashioned belief that eating right is all I need to do. …Not this time. All of my energy was being sapped by trying to heal and there is none left over. Please grace me by not sending me your vitamin suggestions. I am set up now. Thoroughly. My caretakers have become duly concerned about my lack of energy. I had X-rays to see if pneumonia has sneaked in, blood tests to see if diabetes (planted in my family genes) has moved into heckle me. On Monday I am hoping for a fabulous report. “There is nothing wrong with you except that you have three nails in your hip that don’t belong there.”
A teenager came to Christ this week. I don’t know how it happened. I never do. Other teenagers are taking what they are learning and becoming involved in the lives of lost kids. Absolutely nothing is more important.
My precious Dee said to me this morning, and the tears are still flowing all over my laptop that my boys bought me: “Mother, I am here to work behind the scenes and keep the details of your life as organized as possible so that you may continue to let the Lord use you as He see fit.”
HYMN OF THE WEEK “JESUS CALLS US”
Jesus calls us o’er the tumult of our life’s wild, restless sea.
Day by day His sweet voice soundeth, Saying, ‘Christian, follow me.’

Love, J