Monday, June 14, 2010

Faith As Small As A Mustard Seed

That's the thought that comes to my mind today after watching him for the last two weeks. Two weeks ago a neighbor knocked at our door and in her hands was a carton. A carton that had no doubt recently held a dozen juice boxes for her toddler triplets. It now held a tiny kitten.
"I didn't know what to do but I knew you were a cat person," she said breathlessly. Yes, I was known as the Crazy Cat Lady to family and friends. Obviously it had leaked out to a few neighbors as well.

Inside this carton was the tiniest kitten I had ever seen. Over the last twenty years I've owned a few cats but the youngest I had ever had was two months old, the age that is deemed 'ready' to leave momma. This kitten was nowhere near that and I suspected either momma had left him behind or he had wandered from the nest. If it hadn't been for the torrential rain I would have entertained the idea of leaving him near where he had been found in the hope that momma would come back for him. But our neighbor explained how the only reason she had scooped him up was because he had been wobbling down her driveway, on his way to our busy road. Today the roads aren't too safe for us, so she was panicked thinking about this tiny creature manuevering a road that at this time of the year would be frequented by more drivers as college students returned home and high school students took to the roads, free from books for the summer.

"Sure," I said "I'll take him to the shelter so you don't have to juggle him and the kids." I felt it was the right thing to do. After all, not only did she have two and a half year old triplets but she had recently had a heart procedure. It was the Christian thing to do - spare her the stress and trip and just take it to the shelter myself. My children are teenagers and it would be no problem to drop him off in the morning.

That was two weeks ago. Two weeks of traveling all over the county only to be told he's too small, too young. No shelter would accept him because he was under eight weeks, under two pounds and still needed his momma. And so I've been his momma now for two weeks. We've progressed from bottle feedings to wet food, from wetting newspapers to wetting in his litter. He's no longer so wobbly and he's slowly exploring the world around him, despite living in the basement to avoid contact with my cats because of his unknown health status.

He's still too young according to the shelters. He's still too small accoding to the shelters. But good things come in small packages. And if faith the size of a mustard seed is sufficient enough to see us through troubling times, I believe in my heart that this little guy is going to be just fine.

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