Gia Miriam George
Sep 4, 2018 · 6 min read

(18) The Cat, The Dog, and The Wife

Most of the time when my husband gets back home, he is sure to be greeted by his women folk. Well, that’s what he likes to call the cat, the dog, and the wife who meets him at the front door. It gives him a good chuckle to see the three of us wait expectantly around him as he unpacks his bag in the hopes of getting a treat each.

Long ago when I voiced out to my mother that I was outnumbered by the men in our house, she said the only way to remedy that was to get pets who are all females. So that’s what I did. Unfortunately, I have stiff competition from the cat and the dog. The cat being the most demanding.

Now the cat and the dog, though being females, are poles apart in the way they like to be handled. Understanding the mind of the dog is second nature to me. Growing up, we had at least couple of them following us around at all times. They were an extension of the family. At times more cherished than some family members.

I had always considered myself to be a dog lover. Cats were alien to my world. So whether or not to get a cat was a mind boggling decision. All I could anticipate were scratch marks on the furniture, tattered curtains, mauled arms and feet, and fierce fights between the cat and the dog. It took me quite a while to finally decide to get one.

The boys were exasperated with a mother who would one day agree to get a kitten and then decide not to the next day. They wished I would just make up my mind. Easy for them to say but I wasn’t brainless enough to believe their “We will take care of the kitten.” Sure, just like the times I used to promise my mother that I would be solely responsible for the puppies that found their way into our homes. Every smart mother knows eventually who is going to end up taking care of and cleaning up after the four legged members of the house.

What a stark surprise it was to get a kitten. She simply turned our world upside down. This puny little thing was able to teach the boys within days to be gentle and stop prancing about like buckling horses. Something I had tried to get them to do without much success. The boys still prance about but now they do it more cautiously.

We had to take a totally different approach with the cat. What worked with the dog simply drove the cat crazy. You see, our dog loves a nice belly rub. When she flops down beside you and has her paws up in the air, it’s an invitation for a good old belly rub. And you know she is in dog heaven. But when the cat flops down beside you and stretches out her paws, the last thing she expects is a belly rub. We soon learnt that a belly rub to a cat is treason in her world. Instead she expects us to give her a gentle chin massage and scratch her behind the ears.

One of the simple pleasures in our dog’s life is to be given bear hugs. I think she lives for them. She could sit there all day being petted and hugged. Now I better think twice before zooming in to give the cat a love squeeze. I am most likely to end up with a swat on the face and a scratch on the arm, while she walks away with her nose high up in the air and her tail angrily swishing to and fro. What she will instead permit us to do is to extend our hand to her. And if her highness is in the mood for it, she will then allow us to gently pet her on the head.

Now when the dog is happy you can just about read it in those merry little eyes of hers. It doesn’t take a PhD to know she is so glad to see you. She just exudes love. On the other hand, if I hadn’t known the language of the cat, I would have thought those silent stares a cat gives you, and the majestic way she closes her eyes and turns her head away from you was the epitome of bad attitude and pride. But that is the purest way a feline says “I love you, human.”

And so when the cat decides to seek you on her own and finds you writing in your journal and decides she needs to take a nap right across the pages, you just let her and watch her with a warmth in your heart. Or when you are busy typing out a story on your phone, and she jumps up on your lap to curl around and purr away, you put your story on hold and keep the phone aside to gently rest your arms around her and allow her to sleep peacefully. Because that is a priceless gift a cat gives to the one she trusts. You see, the truth of the matter is that the cat will only sleep, with abandon, in a place where she can completely trust with her whole heart.

Now, before you think I figured all this out on my own, on how to reach out to the cat in a manner she understands, I better set you on the right course. You see, before we got our kitten, I poured over endless online resources to learn the ways of a cat. I read and reread articles that helped me understand the world of the cat. What worked and didn’t work, what could she be telling us through her gestures and behaviour, what could we do to connect with her, how best to get to know her, to understand her, and to ease her into our world. All that I read and shared with the rest of the family were priceless in helping us get to know our cat’s world and reach out to her.

So then as sons and daughters of the Most High God, we are no longer part of this world. We can’t approach life the way the world sees fit or the way it speaks to our natural senses, just as I can’t approach the cat the way I approach the dog. It is so vital to our very existence to understand God’s viewpoint. It’s the only thing that matters in our lives. What He considers as important should be our defining stance.

If we can humble ourselves to then search His ways, our perspective on life will begin to shift. He will begin to answer us with great and mighty things we do not know as we call upon Him. He will begin to reveal Himself to us as we seek Him. And we will begin to understand what is important to Him and what is not.

In His viewpoint, this life is just a shadow of our life to come. It’s eternity that we look forward to. This world is not our home, we are just passing through. If we can allow this truth to sink into our very being, then our priorities will begin to change.

In God’s eyes, we were the walking dead. He considered us dead in our trespasses even when we considered ourselves physically alive. But the moment we received Jesus into our lives by faith, we became spiritually alive to our God (Ephesians 2:5). If we can then begin to see ourselves as Spirit beings that posses a soul and put into a physical body, we will begin to seek the things of the Spirit (John 3:6). That is life to us. The things of the world are of death.

May we dig deep into His Word. His truths are hidden in there. He will begin to reveal things we would never be able to find out on our own. And His truths will set us free.

~ Gia

September 5, 2018

Gia Miriam George

Written by

Highly Favoured of The Lord; Wife to A Gentleman; Strong Mother of Three Precious Boys; Awesome Aunt; Treasured Friend...

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