The beasts

Early this morning, I dreamed that I took Macho to some sort of vet clinic (which, unfortunately, was a frequent occurrence toward the end of his life). Either the technician or the vet explained that they would need to surgically remove Macho's lips, and they were surprised and almost angry that I didn't understand that the operation needed to happen. (I suppose it never really occurred to me that cats actually had lips.) Then I woke up.

What an absurd dream. I don't think it had any meaning other than how God explained it to me: Macho used to invade my lap in real life, and this morning he invaded my dream. Then I sort of cried.

 

Before Macho was my lap cat, he was my roommate's cat. (He's the humongous orange one in this photo.) Last night, I was randomly thinking about something that happened when Choochie and I lived with Macho and my roommate.

We lived in my roommate's family's old 1940s house. She had noticed a small caved-in spot in the bathroom floor; so one night after a lifegroup met at the house, she asked one of her friends to venture under the house and examine the spot. (I may have told this story before on this blog, but I think it bears repeating.) The crawlspace door was located in the floor of my closet, so we moved some stuff out of the way, opened the door, and let our friend examine the spot under the bathroom. When he was done, we closed the door. Everybody left, and my roommate and I proceeded with our getting-ready-for-bed routines.

Meahwhile, Choochie suddenly decided to snuggle closely to me, as if she were saying, "You're my best friend."

The next day was a normal day until my roommate came home from work that evening. She was frantically calling out Macho's name, looking outside for him and everything. She said she hadn't seen him since we opened the crawlspace door and that she kept hearing some ominous meowing afterwards and didn't know where it was coming from. She suspected that Macho was trapped under the house.

Sure enough, she opened the crawlspace door in my closet again and pulled him out. He was shaky, spastically meowing, and had a little ring of dirt around his tail. If you've ever seen a cartoon where a cat freaks out, the scene looked kind of like that.

Choochie snuggled closely to Macho, as if she were saying, "You're my best friend." (Perhaps if she could have talked, she also would have told us the night before, "Um, in case you haven't noticed, that giant bum is trapped under the house.")

In hindsight, I don't think my roommate was a true cat person. If she were, I don't think she would have allowed herself to go to sleep until she knew where her baby was. "I thought he was with you," she explained to me. Nope. Not until I took full custody of him some time later. Then it was till death do us part.

At any rate, being stuck under the house for 20 hours changed Macho forever, in a good way. He became much more assertive. Shortly after the incident, I was in the living room talking to a friend on the phone (it was a landline that was plugged into the wall, so I was sitting down during the conversation). Macho sauntered up to me; I believe he was carrying a toy in his mouth, and he dropped it on the floor when he reached me. After staring at me for a few seconds, he demanded, "MEOW!!!" I suddenly felt compelled to tell my friend, "Sorry, I have to go now. My roommate's cat wants to play."

So, my humongous lap cat had quite a loud meow for the rest of his life.

 

Macho is long gone, but now the cat with the big personality in my life is MeepMeep. A couple of days ago, she went into heat again (after a three-month break). I've learned that there's nothing I can do to stop it. I just need to let it run its course.

Fortunately, I can have a bit of fun with it now. I realized that her little exotic dance matches the rhythm of the song "Macarena," so I downloaded it onto my phone, and I play it for her sometimes when the mood hits her. Heh, heh.

Sometimes when I interact with her, the words that come out of my mouth remind me of the way that God talks to me. Yesterday, I heard myself tell her while I was holding her anxious little body in my arms, "Your adorable little agony will be over soon."

Macho was forever changed while he was trapped under a house. I wonder how MeepMeep will change while she's experiencing another hormonal hurricane.

"Thus my heart was grieved, and I was vexed in my mind. I was so foolish and ignorant; I was like a beast before You." (Psalm 73:21-22)

Last night, I was angry-blubbering to God during my "quiet" time. My language wasn't pretty, and I'm very glad no other humans were in the room with me while I was fuming. But God didn't swat me away. Instead, I felt like He grinned and said gently, "Tell Me more." The entire conversation was like that. After I finished and was winding down for the night, I sighed with relief. I felt like He basically said, "Didn't that feel good?" Why, yes, it did indeed.

Psalm 62:8 says that we should pour out our hearts before God and that He is a refuge for us, and that's exactly what happened. His presence is the safest place for a meltdown to occur.

Frankly, I think the best example I've had in my life of how to respond to a person who's falling apart, raging angrily, or having a meltdown has been God Himself. He rebukes me when I need it, but He mainly just listens and lets me puke it all out. He lets my little moment run its course.

I hope I'll be able to follow His example someday, because sometimes people just need a safe place to unravel.

But for now, I'm hoping that this season -- in which I feel like I'm temporarily trapped, and in which I'm caught in a desert storm that I can't control -- will change me for the better. Maybe I'll become more assertive like Macho. Or maybe I'll become more attached to my Provider like MeepMeep. Or hopefully both.

 

In the meantime, maybe MeepMeep will give my heavily scabbed arm a chance to heal while she, uh, is obsessed with other pursuits. (Or while she silently plots to steal my pillow.)