Knock, knock...

Meet House. Just 5 short months ago she looked like this. A scrappy little ball of fluff with wild hair growing out of her ears. She showed up at our farm after being rescued from the middle of the road, where she'd apparently been abandoned.
We named her after tv's Dr. House because of her standoffish nature, gray hair, and at first glance we thought she was male. Not so. But the name stuck regardless of gender.
In previous posts I've mentioned a terrorist kitten nicknamed Osama--Osama and House are one and the same. Don't let her cuteness deceive you. She is a terrorist tornado inside the house. Still, we like her and she is a part of the family. Besides, she is usually good for some entertainment.





This is House just a few months later. Still getting into trouble, but looking like an adult, even though she's still a youngster.
You can imagine our surprise when the scrappy little teenage barn kitten started getting unusually fat a few weeks ago. Surprise? More like shocked and horrified. We never even had a chance to explain the birds and the bees to her before House started this expansion project; before Osama started growing a sleeper cell right in our barn.

We didn't even know there were any tomcats in the area, which added to our surprise about House being "in a family way". (Who says that anymore anyway?)
But one day we went out to the barn and found this guy all cozy and moved-into our heated tack room. Better than that, this tomcat intimidated dogs and people out of the room. He looks sweet in this picture, but he's usually hissing and growling. We are fairly certain he is the father of House's kittens, given the timing of his arrival and the fact that he expresses great dislike for all living things except for House. And me.



Meet Max. When we ask the question, Who did this to our little girl?! he is the prime suspect. Mostly because he is the only suspect.
He's not a bad looking cat, for a cat. (I'm not a cat person)
We spent a few days knocking on the neighbors' doors trying to find his home. No dice.
Now Max quickly went the way of all of our "barn" cats...my mom brought him inside. (Of course he bit her on the way). He hissed and growled like a dang panther and had the dogs in a corner. So, I wasn't exactly sure what to make of him climbing into my lap and falling fast asleep. There was an occasional growl and hiss from the dozing feline. Then he got really comfortable and stretched out on me like a baby with his chin on my shoulder. Seriously, it feels like some sort of fatal attraction relationship. When he does that I'm afraid to move him or upset him.
We briefly discussed naming him Church, but decided there's no need to set ourselves up for some awful self-fulfilling Stephen King prophecy. Max he remains.

I made a point of tossing Max outside at night. For some reason, he knows how to work the cat door in and out of the tack room in the barn, but he is baffled by the cat door from the garage into the house. I know this because the other day I was helping our neighbor girl wash out the scrape on her hand where Max bit her (not badly) when all of a sudden we heard this horrific screaming noise. And then our old barn cat, Lily, came tearing through the cat door like her tail was on fire. She and Max got into it, but the cat door stopped him cold.

Mom brought Max in that night, too. He clobbered me with his fatal attraction affection again. I threw him out like normal. (This isn't cruelty, he has a cushy heated room all to himself in the barn) About 10 minutes later he showed up back in the house. Apparently he figured out the second cat door. Great. I felt like Fred Flintstone tossing the cat outside over and over again.

I went to bed, started reading and there he was. Max the stray cat waltzed into our house climbed onto my bed, laid on my chest, and went to sleep. When I tried to move him he growled. Since he'd proven himself rather persistent and I didn't care be scratched or bitten, I decided to play his game. And that is how I came to be held prisoner in my own bed by a stray cat that let himself into our house.

Penance for a Tarantula

I have a confession to make. It's about the tarantula from last month. I was having a conversation with the exterminator, who was an expert in all things spider, and he gave me some fascinating information about that tarantula. Information that left me feeling like one heck of an ignorant jerk.
It turns out that tarantula was just going about its normal fall migration, not coming out of a nest on the porch like I feared, and would have been gone the next day.
Also, he could have been up to 30 years old (the tarantula, not the exterminator). Wow.
With this new information, I've become perhaps a bit overly contrite with respect to spiders and insects around the farm. It's as though I think I can do enough penance to somehow bring that tarantula back to life. I know it's ridiculous.
I gently relocate spiders outside, right stinkbugs that are stuck on their backs. All the while, though, (and this is the weird thing) it's not the exterminator that I hear. It's Oprah. I hear her reciting those tarantula facts like she's narrating Life. (Who thought that was a good idea anyway?) And unlike the standard, neutral, British guy nature show narration, there's something about Oprah's voice that always triggers value judgments in my brain. I can't believe the male lion just sits around waiting for the female to bring him the food and then he has the gall to eat first!
So with Oprah doing the tarantula fact monologue in my brain, I fear I am on the mother of all guilt trips. I wonder when she'll go away? Soon, I hope. I am trying to think of people I'd like having in my head less...but I am having trouble coming up with anyone.

Sick as a what?

Winter virus season? Love it. Sheri the pharmacist shot us up with flu shots like Rambo right there in the supermarket, so at least the whole family didn't get bowled over by the flu. I am the last one to get this monster cold and it feels pretty miserable. Some might venture to use the phrase, "sick as a dog".
That got me to thinking about what that actually means. We have dogs. Four. Last week we even had five. I am no stranger to a sick dog. In my years of experience there are two key tip-offs that a dog is sick; and either one of those symptoms requires intensive carpet cleaning. I'm thinking that whoever came up with that phrase never spent much time with a sick dog. Because those sure aren't symptoms anyone would go around advertising in a cute little colloquialism.

So much more than a sunrise

I'm sitting here at my desk, coffee at my side, waiting for the sunrise to begin. I can see hints of it, but daylight is still hiding somewhere beyond the horizon. Oklahoma, maybe? That sun--I think one of his functions is to be a reminder of God's faithfulness to us.

And here I am figuratively in a different season of life while watching the daily arrival of a new season in nature in the literal sense.

The weather is changing, and still the sun comes up each morning. But no longer am I the one waking up to find him waiting for me as during the days of summer. Now it is time for autumn and winter when I must wake in the dark, trusting that he is on his way, and continue on mine.

Yet this darkness and delayed dawn is not bleak and without hope.

There is a beauty and stillness that belongs to winter alone. Sound never travels so far nor so clearly as on a winter's night. It is winter that prepares the soil for spring with melting mountain snow nourishing roots long into summer. Isn't in the dark winter seasons of our lives when we're waiting for God to show up that His voice pierces the darkness most clearly? And the things we learn in the cold, painful, lonely seasons, don't they become a continual source of life and growth as they water our roots after the winter has passed?

Autumn arrives with celebration--harvesting the fruit of trees, vine, plant. Fruit that gives life and sustains through the winter. So often I forget to celebrate the fruit of all that God brings forth in my life through changing seasons and circumstance.

And the foliage that worked so tirelessly to bring life to that fruit? It gives up its life in celebration, with a burst of brilliant color before retiring to the ground where it will eventually bring life to roots again. But not without a long winter. Perhaps these winter seasons are for a bit of resting? Maybe they aren't so bleak and silent after all.

It is past 8am, the coffee in my cup is nearly cold, but dawn is finally breaking low in the sky. And, so, the sun and the seasons he brings remind me this morning of God's faithfulness and intentionality in our lives. For He is more faithful and more purposeful still than the sun and seasons He created. How much more might I rest fully and confidently in Him!

Here comes the sun. I might just run outside to meet it and say hello.