Cats do it too

The story goes about a guy who found a feline curled up on his door-step one fine morning. She looked up with pathetic eyes that bored into his soul, and the man was hooked....he took the cat in as his own, gave her a basket to sleep in, fed her the best cat-food daily, and let her climb onto his lap for neck rubs. He loved the cat, and thought the cat loved him. Every day the cat would disappear sometime in the evening, but she would always be back for the nite. The man didn't think too much of this disappearing act, thinking perhaps she was into meeting up with the neighborhood 'cat-gang'... till one day, he had to go out in the evening to get something from the nearby sundry shop. As he walked down the street, he was shocked to see 'his' cat in another house. An old lady was feeding kitty. Swiftly he walked up to the gate, and trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice, he called out, 'excuse me, ma'am, that's my cat you are feeding, " to which the lady promptly shot back, "I beg your pardon, she is my cat. She always comes by this time of the day to eat and sleep in her basket." The man started to protest until he saw 'his' cat saunter over and curl herself up most comfortably in a basket in the house. That night he shooed the cat away when she strided confidently back to his house. They say that unlike dogs who are man's best frens, you can never own a cat, its the cat that owns you...a cat will set herself up as queen of your house, and contrary to human assumption, a cat is the boss of your household, not your pet.

I should know, we have 3 cats, the latest literally 'adopted' us when she waltzed into the house one day. We initially named him Marmalade, but changed it into Simba, coz Marmalade was quite a mouthful. Well, Simba has wormed his way into the household with his manja-ness. He knows his position at the bottom of the feline hierarchy, and is wise enuf to back off from Zaza, our little tigress-puss, who's been known to chase the neighbors dog instead of the other way round, as would be the natural order of things. Zaza is quite the bad-tempered mistress, she hisses and bares her claws whenever they all gather for chow- time around their 3 separate bowls. The old matriarch of the house Uggy simply ignores the young upstart and behaves as if Simba is non-existent, literally 'no eye c' him.

Well, we figured they would sort themselves out somehow in acceptable, if not exactly peaceful, co existence. Simba promptly 'booked' his fave snooze spots, on top of the ironing board or in an old flower basket in the living room. When the whole family left for our annual holiday for 5 days, our neighbor graciously agreed to feed the cats. Upon our return, Simba wasn't around to greet us. He failed to turn up at chow-time even after 3, 4 days. In a way, I was glad coz it meant 1 less mouth to feed (hallo, feeding 3 cats 3x daily is no joking matter!). My neighbor told the kids Simba had gone off to 'adopt' another household down the road. Well, good riddance, I thought, if that's how flippant and temporary his loyalty is to the hands that fed him. But the next day, Simba was back and behaving as if we were his heart's one and only true love, sidling up the side of my leg, purring repeatedly to be petted and reclaiming his snooze-spots in the house. I was quite outraged at his audacity. This was unabashed 'adultery', and he wasn't even ashamed, how could he? I felt cheated, betrayed. Ok, ok, he's a cat, and cats don't 'commit adultery', they are just instinctively self preserving creatures that will do what they need to do in order to survive.

But it got me thinking. What animals may be at liberty to do to survive, humans do it too, but for much less compelling reason. And I understood how God must view man's spiritual adultery, running away after all sorts of other than Him. God created man to love and for love, joined with and to Him in the most ideal intimacy of a living relationship. But instead of being content to remain within the confines of His safe arms, we chose to look outside of Him. Eve looked at the forbidden fruit dangling in front of her eyes, and promptly took a bite. A right royal king David fell becoz he looked ...at what he wasn't supposed to be looking at - another man' wife bathing. Another king, Solomon, wisest man in the world then, got his kingdom torn away becoz he chose to love 700 wives and 300 concubines, instead of sticking to 1 wife and God. And so it has been throughout history...lust starts with a look, unfortunately it never stops with just 1 look.

We look away from God and see what we perceive as greener grass on the other side of the field.. I dunno what was in the other house that attracted Simba away. Maybe their basket was bigger, maybe they played ball with him more, maybe their cat-food was more expensive and nicer-tasting. But it wasn't like we neglected him, even tho we went away for awhile, we made sure someone would take care of his needs. Still he wandered off... I guess humans too are so prone to wander off from God at the slightest excuse. After all, there are so many other things more exciting, attractive and self-satisfying than an absentee God, who can't (or rather won't) even prove His own existence.
But wait a minute, why should God get upset if the alternatives we seek aren't bad things by themselves? What's so wrong about wanting other loves, success, money, power, fame, career, family, even sex for that matter? Didnt God create all things good? Why is He so hung-up on Himself, that He must be número uno- maybe God's got a serious ego problem. I did wonder about that, and I finally figured it out that it's not so much God needs us to put Him first. It's the other way round, we need to get the priority of our life right, if we want to live to our max potential on this earth. The greatest self deception is to believe life is all about doing what we want or love, that we can find fulfillment in what we can achieve, out of our own effort, that we only need to climb and conquer our particular 'Everest', whatever it may be at any particular stage of our life, like old Frank Sinatra crooned, "I did it my way..." That's not to demean the human capacity for achieving great and mighty works. Conquering the 'Everests' of our life is well and good, dreaming impossible dreams is a great motivation. But if in the process we lose sight of the God who has already planned the best destiny of our life, all the everests we conquer are really just never-ending mountains of our own making to satisfy our own egos for that moment in time. Well, is that so bad?

Logically it shouldn't matter , after all Simba got fed and loved in the other house as well, and I am sure he' s quite happy there. What difference does it make, this, that or the other house he parks himself in? All the same. But he should know my neck-rub is different from the other house-owner, my love is different. Is mine the best? Well, I dunno much about loving cats besides giving them neck-rubs. But I do know nothing beats God's love for me; nothing compares. I have experienced it first-hand, I have tasted and know that the Lord is good. I know becoz of the price paid to prove that love - the life of One who chose to die for me, tho I never saw Him in the flesh.
And that's the wonder of God's love story with man; there can be no other love quite like the love of God, there can be no higher blessing than His blessing. There can be no other way than His way. For the simple reason His is always the best, most perfect, excellent and ultimate completion of the circle of life. He is the Beginning and the End.Why else would I want to settle for less?

Simba chose to wander, yet he also chose to come back, for whatever reason was in his catty mind. My first impulse was to deny him entry, like the guy in the story. Adultery is a serious betrayal of sworn affection. What does he take me for - a doddlehead to play around with?? What, he thinks he can just waltz in and out of the house, and expect to be accepted back into the family circle just like that ? Would a husband or wife simply welcome back a philandering spouse who reappears after having broken his/her heart into a zillion pieces, not once but time and again? In ancient cultures, adulterers are stoned to death. Will God simply take us back, when it is we who deliberately choose to turn away from Him repeatedly to run after the desires of our own hearts, chasing myriad 'toys' of the world, tuning and shutting Him out of our life? The amazing truth is He will, and it ain't got anything to do with us. He takes us back any time every time, becoz Jesus already paid the price for our 'spiritual adultery', out of an amazing incomprehensible totally outrageous love. How can I say no to such a Lover?
Simba has again done his disappearing act; its been almost a week now we haven't seen even a shadow of him.. Ahh, the fickleness of cats.... and man.... when will we ever learn? Yet God is  infinitely more gracious than I... whilst I hesitate to take back an 'unfaithful' cat, God's arms are ever open to any and every prodigal son/daughter who is ready to come home...

"...The Lord appeared... saying: 'I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness'.... Jeremiah 31:3