A Portia Story

I want to tell you a story.

Nearly four years ago, my calico cat, Portia, died. (Her anniversary is coming up in June.) She hadn’t been well for a few weeks before her death: not eating, not ‘talking’ in her catty way, not peeing right…well, she was peeing, but not inside her litter tray, if you get my drift. The vet told me she was in renal failure. No wonder she was not herself.

But even before that, there were signs that she was not okay.

About two or three years before she died, she had what I can only describe as a cat-stroke. She started meowing non-stop all of a sudden, raising first one paw into the air, then another.

That’s strange. Maybe she’s hurt her paw.

I examined each paw in turn. She didn’t meow. Her paws looked fine to me. But then I put her down and she held a paw up in the air and just sat like that.

Hmm. That doesn’t seem right.

Then, as I watched, she started walking crooked, her legs criss-crossing over each other as she made her way around the room. She was meowing again.

She’s not okay.

I did the only thing I could think to do. I grabbed her and held her, hoping that this possible stroke or whatever it was would pass. She sank into my arms. I stroked her fur and murmured to her, checking her vitals, comforting her as best as I could. She leaned heavily against me, as though she had lost all muscle tone. I held her securely.

I managed to grab my phone and googled the signs of cat-stroke. Nothing too sinister. I rang the local emergency vet hospital, and they advised me to keep an eye on her and bring her in if she wasn’t better in half an hour. So I held her. She seemed to know she was going to be okay as she nestled against me, in the safest place to be.

Portia did get better. She recovered within about twenty minutes, and she never had another episode like that. I took her into the vet the next day just to be sure, and the vet gave her the all-clear.

As I reflected afterwards on the night of crisis, I thought about how God cares for us like I cared for Portia. Sometimes we are not well. Our lives can get messy. We don’t always know what’s going on. We just know we are in a lot of pain, and that God’s arms are probably the safest place to be.

And during those crises, God holds us securely, knowing that is the thing we need most.

Have you had lessons like this from your furbaby? Have you had times when you have leaned heavily against the secure arms of the Father? What is it like for you to be in the safest place of all? Share your story. Let’s have a countercultural conversation.