by Kevin Burton
Can my cat put two and two together, connect the dots?
This I can never know, of course. But I wonder if at any level she connects her recent trip to the vet and her improved health.
This much we know: Gabbie hates being put in a cat carrier, even if it is the bigger cat carrier that technically belongs to Ronnie, the other cat. We know she hates being at the vet’s office, especially when a vet has the temerity to touch her uninvited, poke and prod her, even sometimes, inject her.
Recently she started a hairball-type wheezing, but I knew the problem was worse than a mere hairball because the wheezing wouldn’t go away. Then she started sneezing. We decided to get her checked out.
Jeannette said we should get her in right away, so she took her to the vet while I was at work.
Jeannette said Gabbie openly displayed her displeasure taking multiple swipes at the vet, and I believe it because I’ve seen her do that before. She said the vet was laughing, saying “I should be scared, but I think it’s funny. I don’t blame her.”
Through pure cat-itude Gabbie can hold the younger cat Ronnie at bey, though Ronnie is close to twice her size. Gabbie is almost completely deaf, so it’s only in the sense of embracing others’ opinions that I say she is not a real good listener.
Gabbie says, it’s my way or the highway.
So it was that someone with greater knowledge and the purest of intentions – first Jeannette and me, then the vet – put Gabbie through some trials, and she resisted. Big time!
Early returns are that the antibiotics she received have taken care of what the vet thinks was an infection. Her symptoms have all but vanished.
Gabbie’s objections to a vet visit don’t stop us or even make us pause from taking her in. The annual visits, maybe she would never see the need for. But could she possibly link the vet visit to her breathing easier?
Well cats have obvious cognitive limitations, but what about you and me? Are we outraged about things God puts us through even if they are for our own good?
I will speak for myself, yes.
No matter how many times Gabbie re-teaches me this lesson, I end up complaining – sometimes loudly – about God’s choice of cure for what ails me.
But just like my cat lashing out at the vet, when I complain to God, I do so with no claws. My fit of pique is laughable.
“Remember this: If any other condition had been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put you there,” writes, Alistair Begg, speaker on the Truth For Life radio ministry. “You are placed by God in the most suitable circumstances, and if you could choose your lot, you would soon cry, ‘Lord, choose my heritage for me, for by my self-will I am pierced through with many sorrows.’”
“Be content with the things you have, since the Lord has ordered all things for your good. Take up your own daily cross; it is the burden best suited for your shoulder and will prove most effective to make you perfect in every good word and work to the glory of God,” Begg writes. “Busy self and proud impatience must be put down; it is not for them to choose, but for the Lord of Love!”
And while we are at it, why don’t we take this to the ultimate level.
Does anybody else have difficulty with the book of Job, or Is it just me? Our home Bible study is in Job these days.
We are only three chapters into Job. We haven’t gotten to the most famous line from the book, God asking Job, “where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” It’s an unanswerable question, not even a question in the sense that it is asked to elicit an answer.
The question did deliver Job and delivers us to this day, to the obvious conclusion, that God knows best. Very few of us suffer anything even approaching the loss and adversity that Job did. Even so it is tough for some of us to accept the hard times.
The point is to trust in God. His answers are better than mine ever will be. The Bible spells it out for me and at Gabbie does her part too.
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