When Feral Cats Show Up (WNIJ) And Our Neighbor Enters Glory

It’s magical when feral cats show up at the farm. We bless them because we’ve had rats so fat and tame I could grab one as she ran up the rafters.

This year two gray and white cats arrived. They acted like a bonded pair. We named them Fluffy and Slick. None of our neighbors claimed them. We set out food, the expensive kind. Soon Slick sat with our kitchen window in her line of sight, signaling it was time to fill her dish. Or if her dish was full, she’d sit by the door as if to say, can you hurry up? At night Fluffy lounges in the yard, waiting.

One day Bruce saw Slick trotting across the yard with a vole in her mouth. She ducked into the shed. “They do that when they have kittens,” he said.

“Oh boy,” I thought. “What are we going to do with kittens? No way do I want a cat colony.”

Well, four kittens showed up–two gray and whites, a solid gray and a tabby.

Drat, we should have trapped the parents and had them fixed. But it’s hard to know if drop-ins will stick around. And it has been joyous to watch the kittens play, even though they scatter when they see us.

I’m grateful to TAILS, our local spay and neuter clinic, for setting up an appointment and for saying just call us if you can’t trap her. Anyone need a barn cat or two?

I’m Katie Andraski and that’s my perspective.

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Lights and Sirens come Down Our Road

The other morning Bruce and I were lying in each other’s arms, enjoying the quiet fruits of married life, and that thin space we all feel between sleeping and waking, when we heard the squeak of sirens coming down our road. They don’t usually turn those on, unless something awful has happened.

“Oh shit,” I said and jumped out of bed to the window to see the ambulance turn down our neighbor’s road. Both are in their 80’s. We pulled our clothes on quickly. Bruce is an ambulance chaser, because as a man raised in the country, he knows to offer support when something awful drives down our road. I stayed back with the dogs because they needed potty breaks.

I was just finishing up Dolly’s walk, when Bruce pulled back in the driveway. “I’m sorry Sweetie. Donna went into the glory of eternal life.” I burst into tears, into his arms. And I don’t cry easily. And tears are a blessed relief, a gift. Sometimes I think my heart is hard. I long for that heart of flesh that God promises the people in the prophets. Ezekiel quotes God, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26, ESV).

Donna died in her sleep, at home, expelling the waste from this life and entering glory, not unlike when a baby is born. But our dying is to be born into being fully human. Finally we become who God intended us to be when he made us. John Behr in Becoming Human says, “As we shall see, it is rather because he conquers death by his death that Jesus enables all men and women also to use their own mortality to come to life in him” (23).

No death is a good death. Death is the last enemy. But Donna was here. Then she was gone home. She was spared the humiliation of being a frail elder, and the possibility of being utterly dependent on others’ care. She’d lived her ordinary days with ordinary pleasures–looking at her trees, feeding her barn cats, seeing the sunset, feeding barbecue to her hay crew, looking up genealogy stuff. Then she was absent from the body and present with the Lord.

I texted our other neighbor, whose husband watches over the neighborhood. (He plowed us out with his big front end loader after Snowmaggedon.)His family has owned fields to our west and south for at least 60 years. I hooked Oma to her leash and walked down the road, weeping. The world became even more magical than it had been before. The clouds opened a window into the sun, as if we were looking at the hole in the clouds with Donna’s flight to heaven.

Memories of Donna were close by. She brought us presents because I’d medicated her horse’s eyes, for three months, twice a day, trying to fix her moonblindness. They live just around the corner, so it was a kind of gift, a taking up my cross, denying myself, in a small, patient way, a practice I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not good at. We ate out when planting and harvest were done, and especially on New Year’s Eve, sharing stories from our lives. She laughed, trying to pronounce Omalola’s crazy name, fussing over her from their Gator. I could still hear her voice.

I almost turned to walk up the road to give her husband, Chuck, a hug, but the EMTs and Police and coroner and neighbors were there. Oma feels compelled to greet people enthusiastically, overwhelmingly, so I walked the other way, crying. I walked past Terry and Karen’s red barn, a quiet, comforting presence, and turned back towards home. Gosh those tears felt good. Then I turned around and I waved down John who was headed to work. When stuff like this happens neighbors should know. Years ago a dear friend passed away, and no one from our former church told us. We do not browse the obituaries, so I know what it’s like not to know. John’s car was full of tools and smelled like oil. He said he’d lived in the neighborhood since 1968. He said he was sorry. He would tell his family.

A rainbow, faint, stood up over the bean field. I could barely see it. I have just finished reading the prophet Ezekiel and thought of his vision by the River Chebar. “Like the appearance of the bow that is in the could on a day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. Such was the appearance of the glory of the Lord” (Ezk 1: 28). Muted, but that’s how this walk up the road, felt.

I was being told, “Look. When someone dies the veil between here and heaven thins out.” On the day Donna died, Richard Rohr posted, “Liminal Space” where he talks about how when people die, we are invited to liminal space, “We shut away people who are ill and dying in hospitals and nursing homes, rather than allowing them to spend their final days at home, surrounded by loved ones who will learn and grow by dwelling together in the liminal space between life and death. We avoid other times of liminality in our lives through denial, escaping with the help of alcohol, sugar, and drugs to avoid truly experiencing the opportunities of liminal space.”

“Liminal space relativizes our perspective. When we embrace liminality, we choose hope over sleepwalking, denial, or despair. The world around us becomes again an enchanted universe, something we intuitively understood when we were young and somehow lost touch with as we grew older.” When Bruce’s mother died, I remember how hard she worked at dying, how she sounded like a race horse breezing down the track. I remember the bright, crisp March morning walk down her road. And how quiet, sacred her bedroom became.

We are surrounded by beings, we barely sense. In this week’s Daily Office, the king of Syria sent his armies to attack Elisha because he told the king of Israel to avoid where the Syrian king’s armies were camped. Elisha’s servant said, we’re surrounded by the horses and chariots. But Elisha said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” He prayed and said, “Oh Lord open his eyes that he may see. So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha” (2 Kings 6: 15-17, ESV). We are surrounded. We just don’t have eyes to see.

Donna loved to wear scarfs battened down around her ears, even on warm day. She kept newspapers to read later. She knew the community’s history. Her relations gave Bloods Point Road its notorious name. She was one of these people who volunteer quietly, love their neighbors and are fully themselves. She was a character. She sang to her horse when the farrier trimmed her hooves. Sometimes I think people like her are closer to sainthood, the royal priesthood, than fancy Christians, who huff and puff over their labors for the Lord. And that’s all I know.

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