Sunday 19 January 2014

A Catty Miracle.

This is Marlow, the cat I fell in love with on~line, before I ever met him.  He is the gentlest cat I have ever owned ~ & the neediest.  He frets when I go away but I thought he was doing much better this time.  At least, John wasn't complaining about his behaviour! Well, not too much.

I got home on Friday afternoon & left shortly after for Friday night church.  The cats were happy to see me & seemed fine.  Then Saturday Marlow suddenly started piddling all over the house.  We thought he was just being neurotic ~ frustrating & messy as it was we thought he would settle once he knew I wasn't going away again.  However I noticed that though he was constantly squatting he seemed to be having trouble & when I mopped up there was blood in his urine.

If you've ever owned cats you know this is not a good thing.  It usually means crystals are forming in the urine & beginning to block the urinary tract.  Males are more prone than females so this is not the first time I've had to deal with this.   As I don't feed my cats a lot of biscuits [the main culprit for the condition forming in the first place] & Marlow doesn't really like biscuits I was surprised but was hopeful it could wait till Monday when we have a vet on the island.

I had had a friend who is no longer on the island ring asking to visit so Cait & I agreed to meet up with her at the caf.  As we were waiting for her boat we got a frantic phone call to say Marlow was in a lot of trouble. I was devastated ~ to say the least.  Marlow is a young cat, only 2 or 3 years old & we do actually take very good care of our cats.  No, they don't get all the bells & whistles & yes, they are allowed outside as confining Kirby proved impossible, but they are always inside at night, they get raw necks regularly, broth instead of biscuits, the occasional treat when John is packing the meat.  Their coats are well groomed & they are used to being handled because they are very well loved.

I dug out the cat cage &  rang the veterinary hospital, Cait googled the route & we headed off into the dark.  Why do these things always happen after hours? 

Proverbs 12:10 says: A righteous man has regard for the life of his beast,
    but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.

God cares for all His creation ~ & so I have no qualms whatsoever about praying for my animals, or asking others to pray for them!  So I did. And then the Spirit nudged me.  Go on, He seemed to be saying.  You know what you're supposed to do.  I was a tad surprised & it's true I don't necessarily grasp the practicalities but the theory I do know & so I began praising God, praying in tongues & claiming healing for Marlow ~ & that cat pressed up against the cage as close as he could get to the energy pulsating through my hands.  Don't tell me animals don't know!  Despite his pain & fear he knew from whence his help came ~ & it wasn't me!

This is the same hospital we took Issi ~ & to my distress they put us in the same surgery.  As the vet attempted to remove Marlow from the carrier her eyes widened & she said, It's a cat that just keeps coming!  I'd never realised before quite how long Marlow is! 

 That poor animal.  He stuck his head into the crook of my arm & wedged himself up tight against my body as the vet attempted to examine him.  The good news was he wasn't blocked.  The bad news was there wasn't enough urine in his bladder to take a sample & so she wanted him in overnight.  That would immediately send our costs skyrocketing, to say nothing of Marlow's obvious distress.  I rang John & we opted to bring him home & monitor him there but as I was getting him back into the carrier I noticed he had left a respectable contribution on the surgery table & before I could mop up after him, to my stunned disbelief the vet whipped out a couple of syringes & siphoned Marlow's little deposit up as fast as she could!  Good grief!

Having taken it off for analysis, found a bacterial infection, given the poor animal antibiotics & a crystal dissolving shot we finally bundled him back in the carrier & headed home.  Cait took a wrong turn in the dark, we were starving having missed both lunch & dinner, & I was exhausted having had very little sleep two nights in a row.  We do these sort of runs for choir so often we have our timing down pat.  We can calculate to the second whether we have time for food & toilets so having decided we had time Cait pulled into a pizza place, ordered vegetarian & we were back on the road in under 10 minutes.  God's favour got us a park at the jetty so we weren't running with a cat cage to try & catch the boat that was already pulled in so while Cait dashed for the loo I gathered up the cat & all our belongings & got us down the pontoon.

I still had a sermon to finish for Sunday but here's the thing:  Marlow was displaying every symptom of having a blocked urethra, not just an infection.  Of the 3 of us praying for him, 2 laid hands on him for healing, & all 3 of us were told the same thing by the Spirit: that Marlow would be fine.   One specifically prayed that Marlow would be healed before the vet actually looked at him.  I actually believe that happened.  I sensed when the change took place but continued on just to check he was ok ~ & he is in fact a very healthy cat & his urine ph is excellent, which is unusual in cats.  They tend to be very alkaline as their urine is so concentrated. 

The thing that made the biggest impact on me was something else entirely.  See I have prayed for healing for people, even people who have specifically asked for prayers for healing, & it's as though your prayers are bouncing off a brick wall because they don't really believe God has the power to do it, wants to do it [yes, even for them] & that if they believe it will happen.  There are spiritual requirements but that's not my point here.  Marlow's a cat.  He didn't use what little brain he has over intellectualizing everything: whether God could heal him, would heal him, wanted to heal him.  He just accepted.  And he was healed.  I have learnt something important from my cat about God.

And yes, he's just fine.  Purring up a storm.

4 comments:

  1. I found you! Yes, this is exactly what I have noticed about animals and babies; we are very accepting of healing. The real challenge in healing is meeting people at their faith level and providing what they need to accept the healing.

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  2. I am glad Marlow is well, but then God told you he would be.

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  3. I wasn't hiding ~ not this one. ☺ Yes, he's still piddling but improving. More prayer this morning.

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    1. You may not have been hiding but I did not know you were posting here. I have a lot of catching up to do!

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