As I noted on Sunday, we have a new pussycat. His name is Woodland J. Pussycat (named after the cemetery in which he found us while we were riding our bike), or Woody for short. This has been an interesting experience for us. Clearly, the cat recognized two suckers when he saw them (that would be my wife and me). We didn’t take him till the second day because we thought he might be somebody’s pet. But that probably wasn’t the case because he was so undernourished. Yet he is about the friendliest and most trusting cat I have ever seen, and there was the rub.

In the back of our minds, we were more than a little anxious about taking him to the Vet yesterday. We worried that he might have or be a carrier of kitty leukemia and if he was, we were going to be faced with a terrible decision. We couldn’t bring him home because he might infect our other cats. But when my wife put that little kitten on the exam table and he looked at me with those little trusting eyes of his, I knew there was no way I could pull the trigger on him if we got bad news about his health.

Thankfully, God spared us that choice and he is now happily at home frolicking around like kittens do and terrorizing the other cats (there are benefits to having stray cats find you, I guess, Sylvester excluded). For those of you who do not have pets, this may be hard for you to understand. That notwithstanding, it is true nevertheless. We are called to be stewards of God’s creation and here was this trusting and starving little beast who adopted us at the cemetery. How could we possibly choose to do anything but love and keep him? No, before we had the test results, my wife and I both spent some agonizing minutes when confronted with the awful possibility of having to end a sweet little life. Thanks be to God that Woody is healthy and we were spared of a very heartrending decision.

Does this compare to the enormity of human suffering and the painful decisions we sometimes have to make about loved ones? No it doesn’t. But this is a false dichotomy. It compares apples to oranges. Life is precious and sometimes stewardship is difficult and painful, irrespective of circumstance. Thankfully in this case we were spared a difficult choice.

I am also happy for my wife, who has struggled of late over her father’s death back in December. This new little guy has injected some happiness into our home and he has done her a world of good. For that too I am thankful.

Now we are just trying to make sure Woody doesn’t go bananas. Now that he has some food in his belly, he has gotten his energy back and is a classic wild child pussycat. Consequently, we are having to be on constant watch (when you are young, you play the dating game. When you are old, you play the doting game). We happily do so and are grateful that God has blessed us with this little gift and the accompanying privilege of stewardship for one of his little creatures.