Cats and Friendship

"If, nevertheless , the strong conviction which we have of a real, though doubtless rudimentary, selfhood in the higher animals, and specially in those we tame, is not an illusion, their destiny demands a somewhat deeper consideration. The error we must avoid is that of considering them in themselves. Man is to be understood only in his relation to God. The beasts are to be understood only in their relation to man and, through man, to God....Man was appointed by God to have dominion over the beasts, and everything a man does to an animal is either a lawful exercise, or a sacrilegious abuse, of an authority by Divine right. The tame animal is therefore, in the deepest sense, the only ‘natural’ animal— the only one we see occupying the place it was made to occupy, and it is on the tame animal that we must base all our doctrine of beasts. Now it will be seen that, in so far as the tame animal has a real self or personality, it owes this almost entirely to its master. If a good sheepdog seems ‘almost human’ that is because a good shepherd has made it so.

...

You must not think of a beast by itself, and call that a personality and then inquire whether God will raise and bless that. You must take the whole context in which the beast acquires its selfhood— namely ‘The–goodman–and–the–goodwife–ruling–their–children–and–their–beasts–in–the–good–homestead’....If you ask, concerning an animal thus raised as a member of the whole Body of the homestead , where its personal identity resides, I answer ‘Where its identity always did reside even in the earthly life— in its relation to the Body and , specially , to the master who is the head of that Body.’ In other words , the man will know his dog: the dog will know its master and, in knowing him, will be itself."

CS Lewis, "The Problem of Pain"

Maybe it's just me, but these words ring true to me. I think any pet owner will insist on some sort of "personality" in their pet, something that makes the animal something more than an animal...not a person, perhaps, but something similar. I think about pets a lot, and their proper place in the world and in families. And I've come to a few conclusions:

• Tame animals are, indeed, "natural" in the divine sense. As a cat owner, it pains me to see stray cats wandering streets and parking lots, knowing that they could at any moment meet their end by a careless driver. While such loss might be natural to a fallen world, it is most assuredly unnatural in the divine sense...it is a symptom of creation being "subjected to futility" and groaning in pain. The proper place of animals is in the care of - and under the authority of - humanity. And the proper place of Rory in particular is either purring on my lap, or sitting on his cat tree in a sun beam. 
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• Pets are NOT children, and shouldn't be treated as such. I think that any pet relationship that ends up essentially treating the pet as a substitute for children is disordered, an example of misplaced affections that will likely result in some degree of harm or distress. The pets will not be able to do what children do, and they lack the capacity to return the care and affection that child-rearing is supposed to result in. Child-rearing has a goal that pet-keeping is unable to fulfill.
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• However, as any pet owner will tell you, pets are friends and companions. Anna and I joke that a tired soul can be revitalized merely by rubbing one's face on a soft cat belly. Rory and Martha are our friends. We play with them, we talk to them, we sit with them, we miss them when we're away...the are our friends, in just about every sense of the word. 
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• Finally, I will insist that Rory and Martha have personality. They might not be persons...but they are more than mere beasts. And I tend to agree with Lewis that what they get in personhood, they get through being part of a human family. 

Had you asked me, before I got married and we got Rory, if I would EVER feel this attached to any animal, let alone a cat, I would have laughed at you. But now...it's different. I think that pets have a valid role and significance to us specifically as Christians, and that properly keeping a pet can be a microcosm of humanity's intended role for all of creation. Also, it's really fun. 

My Friend the Cat

Those of you who know me, know that I love my cat Rory. Without Rory, I surely would have gone crazy working from home while Anna was finishing up grad school, and during the week I still spend more of my waking time with him than with Anna.

Before, I had scoffed (literally, at times) at the concern other people showed for their pets. But now, cuddling and playing with him, taking care of him and watching him grow from a tiny kitty to a larger kitty, I understand. He is my friend, as much as an irrational animal can be called that.

And I wonder whether he is so irrational after all. I wonder whether animals have souls: After all, since we do not believe that human consciousness is confined to the physical phenomena, there is no reason to make that move with animal consciousness. And I wonder what will happen to Rory. I wonder what will happen to this mischievous cat, full of personality, who loves to look through windows, who will seek me out for nap time, whose eyes seem to laugh during play time. I wonder what will happen to my friend when the consequence of human failure and sin catches up to him.

But that is not really what this post is about. Because during Thanksgiving weekend we lost him, and we almost Lost him.

We have to keep him at my parents' house when we visit Shafter for more than a day or two. Anna's parents own a dog, who would almost certainly kill Rory out of mere curiosity. However, my parents' house is full of people coming and going, and all it took was one door opened for a half-second too long, one window left open by accident, and Rory was gone.

We don't even know when he left. All we know is that we left him napping under a spare bed, before we went to spend the night at Anna's parents'...and when we returned to the house at lunchtime the next day, he was gone and no one could remember seeing him that day at all.

We live in the country. We own an acre or two of garden, which houses 3 dogs, 2 puppies, and several cats of varying degrees of domestication, all of which absolutely terrify Rory. And the house is surrounded by almond orchards for miles around on every side.

As soon as he left the house, whenever that was, he would have smelled the dogs and cats. And it would have been mere seconds before one of them approached him, drowning him in terror. We don't know when that happened, or the exact circumstances.

We just know that he ran, and we could not find him for over an hour. I prayed constantly, that God would protect Rory and return him to us. My parents prayed with us, as did my friend Monica, recalling the time of Noah and God's call to the animals, and asking him to do the same with Rory.

Then, as the last thing we felt we could do, Anna and I walked to the nearest cross street, about a quarter of a mile away. We passed our dogs, barking from the pen we'd placed them in. We passed two obnoxiously vicious dogs behind a fence, who followed us as much as they could, barking the entire time. We looked ahead to the next house, also guarded by a barking dog (this one without any kind of restraint at all). And I wondered what had become of Rory, surrounded by so many barking, teeth-filled, scary-smelling monstrosities.

We reached the cross street, and we looked down the road, and there was no roadkill, no bodies on the side of the road as far was we could see. And we slowly turned and began to head back to the house.

I continued to pray as we walked. Ahead of us was the home of the two obnoxious dogs, and I was about to suggest to Anna that we cross to the other side of the street to avoid them. Before I could say anything, however, I heard something. Half a meow. A sound barely indistinguishable from the background.

I stopped, and Anna did too. "What?" She asked.

"I heard something. A meow."

"Are you sure it wasn't a bird?"

I don't know if I answered. I walked into the orchard, scanning the trees, stepping softly. One row in. Two rows in. And--

Meow.

Unmistakable. Anna heard it too, and we continued. And then--

MEOW.

There he was. Sweet, merciful God in heaven, there he was: Seven feet up, in a three-way fork in the tree, looking the saddest and most frightened we had ever seen him.

We got him down. We took him back to the house, and put him in a separate building where he wouldn't be let out by mistake. And even though it's been a few days, I still look at him and marvel at the evidence of God's grace.

How many hundreds of trees in that orchard? How many thousands of trees within just a half-mile of our house? How many thousands more beyond the road? And he was in one of the few where we would be able to hear him. He meowed at exactly the right time: A moment earlier or later and we would have missed it, and he would never have found his way back. He would never have gathered the nerve to brave the dogs again, to go past them and endure their barking.

If he had crossed the road, or gone in the other direction, or chosen one of the other hundreds of trees, we would even now would be anxiously hoping for news that would never come. Rory would have died out there, sad and alone. But he didn't, because the Creator of the universe and everything in it chose to hear our prayers and return my friend to me.