Parable of the Feral Cat, Part Three

Her wild streak had diminished. And then it faded completely.

We came back from a six-week-long trip to find that she was off her feed, even though she was cared for daily in our absence. Her dry food no longer appealed to her, so we opened a can. She licked the juices but wouldn’t eat. I took her water bowl to wherever I found her lying, on the deck or in a flower bed. Then, she even stopped drinking. Now, she wanted to be petted.

Being a feral cat, we knew she knew how to die. Instinct built in by her Creator told her when it was time and what to do. One day when she did not show up, we were sure she had crawled off to die alone. We never found her.

It was her time.

It was uncanny, then, two days later, when sirens sounded coming up our street and turned into the lane next door. The lane of our ninety-two-year-old neighbor, who welcomed our hospitality but refused to look death and its consequences in the face.

Quite unlike our feral cat.

When the emergency vehicle did not come tearing back out with sirens blaring, we knew.

It was his time.

Before we left on our trip, we invited him for a meal. We noticed that he was a bit off his feed and didn’t seem to have much to talk about. But we did. We gently reminded him that the door to eternity was coming nearer—for us all—but for him in particular. He did not have to die without assurance of the eternal life he could have for the asking. He listened. Or, at least, he gave us his attention. Listening can be a different matter.

When we said good-bye, he said, “Next time at my house.” He wanted to buy the food for me to cook at his place. But we were recovering from the trip, attending to matters unattended to for six weeks, and the opportunity was delayed. We called him on the phone, saying, “We’ll get together soon.”

Alas, “soon” was not soon enough.

We loved our cat, as a person loves a pet. We loved our neighbor as we love a person made in the image of God, an eternal soul. We want to see our neighbor in heaven. We told him so.

No one—except the dying—knows what happens in the heart in those final moments. Did he think about eternity? Meeting God? We pray he did. This is our hope for our neighbor: He [God] has put eternity into man’s heart… i

The Preacher, author of the above quote, known to be “the wisest of all men,” writes further: But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God…It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and to the evil…the same event happens to all… ii

…for this is the end of all mankind, and the living takes it to heart… iii

There is some “feral” in each of us. But, unlike our cat who lived by instinct, we live by the gift of our wills, with all the possibilities of choosing how we will live and how—but not when—we will die.

While we are among the living, we need to take the coming eternity “to heart.”

i Solomon, Ecclesiastes 3:11

ii Ecclesiastes 9:1-3

iii Ecclesiastes 7:2b