My God can beat up your god

At the beginning of every spring, at least one of the feral girl cats who live by the pool in my apartment complex will be in heat and come upstairs to look for my boy cat. I assume they can smell his manly cat odor or something, but he’s fixed and can’t produce kittens. Plus, he lives exclusively indoors and isn’t allowed outside at all. (Not that he’d want to go. He often runs and hides anytime strangers come to visit.) My girl cat, however, will bravely fight off anyone. She’s fixed, too, but you really don’t want to mess with her. (I can show you some recent scabs/scars on my hand, wrist, and shoulder.)

One recent morning, I was getting ready for work when I heard a loud thud. I thought maybe one of the maintenance men had thrown something against somebody’s front door or something. I meandered over to the living room and saw that, sure enough, a feral girl cat on my patio had thrown herself onto the window of my sliding door. She was fighting with my girl cat, who was already doing this meow/growl thing by the time I got there. (This feral black cat is one who I’ve known for a while. She’s already had at least 2 litters of apartment-complex kittens.) I tried to calm down my girl cat, and I picked her up to show the feral cat that she was fighting one of mine. She was on my territory and was not welcome here, not if she was going to pick a fight with my cat. I tried to get the intruder to leave my patio by jiggling the sliding door handle, but it didn’t work. Instead, she stroked her cheek on the exterior wall to mark her territory. I unlocked the door and went outside, my hair still wet from my shower, and followed the feral cat downstairs, and I tried to reason with her through the bars of the pool gate that she had fled to. “Hey, leave my kitty alone,” I basically told her. “I’ve always been nice to you.”

The next day, the feral cat returned, but this time, I was in the room with my girl cat when the intruder came. I stroked my cheek on my girl cat to show the intruder that she was mine, and I told the intruder to go away because she wasn’t welcome here. My girl cat was alarmed but calm while I was doing the talking. I shooed the feral cat away. To my knowledge, she hasn’t returned.

God often teaches me a lot about His character and how He feels about me through my cats. God wants to protect me and fight for me anytime the devil comes around to attack me. My girl cat doesn’t have to worry about the feral cat whenever she’s with me. Similarly, Psalm 27 says, “The Lord is the stronghold of my life -- of whom shall I be afraid?” My God can pulverize anything that comes against me.

Maybe now I should teach my boy cat not to be such a scaredy-cat.