God and Rachel

Meet Rachel.  We “fostered” our first cat for 2 months.  I love animals and wanted to give it a go at fostering since it is such a good cause.  A bit of an issue is I haven’t had a “cat” as my own pet for 50 years.  I volunteered to foster Rachel because if no one took her, she was being returned to the streets, since she was feral.

Taming Rachel wasn’t in her cards.  Or should I say, in “my” cards.  She let me hold her in her cat bed and pet her.  That was the extent of my domesticating her.  Then I made the grave mistake of walking her past our noisy stereo speakers, while she was in her cat bed.  She flew out of the bed, dove under the futon, and proceeded to lived there for 1.5 months!  She blessed us with her presence by coming out to eat and use the litter box at night but NEVER ventured into any room we were active in.  She made it pretty clear that people weren’t her thing and being an outdoor cat was a strong preference.

I called the Rescue Pet people she came from and asked them to come get her.  After she started her futon residence, I asked God daily to please show me the right thing to do for her.  I truly felt she would be happier outside but as summer approached, placing a cat on the streets of Phoenix didn’t seem right.  Living at our house under the futon for the rest of her life, didn’t seem right.  Finding another foster may have been right, but no one wanted her.  Finding an adopting family wasn’t going to happen since she remained feral.  The Rescue Pet people said they were going to return her to the streets.  “No good answers God!”

Then God’s answer happened and all the good things occurred. 

#1  The Rescue Pet person came to get her and after 3 of us tried to capture Rachel, while the poor baby climbed walls and hung from window blinds out of sheer terror, Dave caught her in midair, with his bare hands.  Unfortunately, he didn’t escape without bites, scratches and a trip to urgent care.  So first good thing is Dave is ok and Rachel survived the terror of being caught by the dredges of humanity, us humans.

#2  Rachel went to live at the Rescue Pet person’s house until autumn.  She then will be rehoused and become a “barn cat!”  This is something she can do and will love being outside, but cared for, with food and water from the barn humans.

#3  Our house was an utter mess from trying to capture Rachel for a couple of hours.  Plus, the fact that I haven’t stayed home enough to “spring clean” for the past 15 years.  Ha  So I purged, organized, cleaned and redecorated most of the house.

#4  Rescue Pet people had a garage sale and the things I find very hard to get rid of like shoes and purses (do you relate ladies?) were gone through and stacked in my car trunk because I knew the proceeds, were  helping tons of homeless animals, like my Rachel.

Win win for everyone involved!  Romans 8:28, Your ways are always best Jesus!  Thank you!