Kittens and COVID-19—March 2021

Two years ago, on Father’s Day, the family gave David Mains, my husband, two kittens as a gift. He (as was his father before him) is a cat lover. The two were sisters from one litter. We named the grey tabby “Stella” and the tortoiseshell cat “Terra” (“Star” and “Earth,” if you please). For cat lovers, two kittens that grow into household pets are a continuing delight.

A few of the kittens

I have a prejudice that female animals deserve—indeed, they are created—to birth at least one litter, gestate at least one offspring, then go through the natural order of loving, tending to, playing with, and delighting in their offspring—at least once in their life cycle.

So, eventually, with the aid of a couple of male cats who somehow began hanging around our yard, both Stella and Terra became impregnated, and within a year and a half of arriving at our home, gave birth to a combined total of 11 kittens.

On Father’s Day 2019, we had no idea that two years later, 2020–2021, the entire world would be dealing with the international coronavirus pandemic. We had no way of anticipating that the normal activity of our days, the social environments in which we carried out all our goings and comings, of meetings and greetings, of working and socializing, would be completely interrupted by mask-wearing, social distancing and isolating. We couldn’t dream that the majority of us would be forced to work from home, if possible, or that we wouldn’t be able to visit face-to-face with extended family or with our friends and colleagues.

Apart from pandemic experts, who could have foreseen such extraordinary possibilities? A whole nation—indeed, the whole world—forced to take such precautionary measures!

So, David and I have been isolated with our two adult cats and their litter of kittens. During this time, one of the mother cats—Stella, the tabby—began to vomit. A trip to the nearby vet revealed she had a stricture in her intestine that surgery could not correct, partly due to the fact that she had become underweight. Mistakenly thinking that the cause of the vomiting would heal itself, we had delayed too long to seek a cure—this due partly to COVID-19 precautions. Stella died despite the veterinarian’s careful caution.

That left us with one mother cat, Terra, who, amazingly, took over the nursing of all these kits, who were by now seven weeks old and basically weaned and to be readied for new homes.

I put up two street signs, one on either side of our circular driveway: FREE KITTENS/ PERFECT ENTERTAINMENT for COVID-19 ISOLATION! It was my birthday. That morning, as I was hanging the signs, I breathed a prayer, Oh Lord, I don’t want anything for my birthday but to find good homes for the kittens. I’ve had quite a few birthdays so far—78 to be exact—and don’t need celebration. Life enough is the gift.

At the end of twenty-four hours, eight kittens had been observed, fondled and marched out our front door by new and happy owners—two over to our grandchildren’s home. This, I’m sure, was a mixed relief to Terra, who now only had two 7-week-old kittens to nurture. However, one of the kittens was returned because their owner’s older cat did not want to share its territorial imperatives with a newcomer.

I was amazed at the reunion when this cat—the only gold tabby in the two liters—was returned. Terra was delighted. Fur was licked; noses were rubbed together—it was a feline welcoming such as I had never dreamed possible. David and I were amazed.

In addition, when I came home from the vet after Stella died, I put her collar away in the junk drawer in the kitchen. Terra was immediately on the counter. She had heard her sister’s bells. I always have collars with bells in case the cats go outside—this so birds who feed at the feeders David fills will have warning about their natural predators. The collars also have a tag that gives our phone number should a pet wander off. Terra thought her sister had returned.

What we humans don’t know about the animal kingdom!

So, we have gone through these COVID-19 months laughing and delighting in the antics of our kittens. They have been enchanting, wrestling with each other, playing with the soft pet-toys, cuddling together in naps, sharing the cat-climbing tower where, from the top level, they can watch the world out the-dining room window, licking and grooming one another. The cats have given us pause, over and over, to wonder at the creative capabilities of a designing God who even designed such things as a variety of kinds within any one species.

Terra (left) and Stella (right), the kittens' mothers

We also have created a funny dialogue for the two pets and their offspring, calling ourselves “The Bigs.” Oh, the Bigs are back. What are the Bigs laughing about now? The Bigs have been gone a long time. The Bigs have forgotten to put out our special treats. David and I consider some of this imagined dialogue quite clever and funny. We have often found ourselves laughing at the feline antics. Truthfully, what humans—not just cat lovers—can’t be entertained by two kittens wrestling together before the crackling fireplace?

All this above, to simply pose the question: How did our loving heavenly Father know that we would be delighted to have this distraction during such an extraordinary isolation? For us, David and Karen Mains, these days would have been much more bereft in this unwelcome confinement if we had not had pet “entertainment.”

During this coronavirus pandemic, I have been intentionally practicing what we call The God Hunt. This is a spiritual game we designed to teach our children how to spy God in their everyday lives. We believe that what is learned with pleasure is learned full measure. Through the medium of writing and communication media, The God Hunt has undoubtedly touched thousands of lives. Hundreds of people have written to us about their “I spy God!” events.

Quickly, there are four categories where we teach people to seek for God:
1. Any answer to prayer.
2. Any unusual evidence of God’s care.
3. Any help to do God’s work in the world.
4. Any kind of linkage and timing.
We recommend people record their God Hunt findings in a journal, keeping a lifetime record of their sightings. We also suggest they share their “I spy’s” with others.

That, of course, is exactly what I am doing with you. Our COVID-19 cats and kittens have been a lavish display of God’s care for us during these long days and weeks and months. Indeed, they have been a reminder, as we laugh and delight in their antics, of His love, of His remarkable creative initiations, of His sense of humor, of this particular divine quality of wanting His human offspring to know His love is all around, boundless, unending, magnificent and manifold. Two sister kittens who eventually gave birth to eleven kittens—none of them sought by us—just gifts one Father’s Day in the year 2019.

Think about it.

Karen Mains

Reminder!

The Soulish Food e-mails are being posted biweekly on the Hungry Souls Web site. Newcomers can look that over and decide if they want to register on the Web site to receive the biweekly newsletter. You might want to recommend this to friends also. They can go to www.HungrySouls.org.

Karen Mains

BOOK CORNER

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
by Jenny Odell

This is the season of Lent, and due to a dysfunctional esophagus, I don’t dare fasting food! I just got my weight up to 115.5 lbs. YEAH!

However, Jenny Odell’s book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy makes a good case for fasting from the overriding, pervasive influence of the technology culture in which we live. She is NOT thinking about Lenten exercises, but I am. I’m going to begin to resist checking my cell phone as frequently as I do—once a day, late in the afternoon, AFTER all the other work is done.

In addition, I re-read my own book Making Sunday Special, and I was aghast at how the discipline of maintaining a weekly Sabbath/Sunday observance has slipped over these last years. That book insists that we need to begin making Sabbath/Sunday plans midweek, about Wednesday. Time for some spiritual revitalization!

Howe about this: When I open Safari to do a search for something (this morning it was about the well-known pastor Norman Vincent Peale), I will try not to chase down all the other enticing leads the Internet dangles before my eyes. I will check my cell phone late in the afternoon each day—once—but not during the Saturday/Sunday cycle. Instead, I will try to renew the revitalizing and beautiful spiritual practice of making Sunday the best day of the week and of not being addicted to what technology is designed to do—addict viewers to its usage.

Back-Cover Copy for How to Do Nothing

“Your chaotic, fraught internal weather isn’t an accident: It’s a business-model. And while 'thoughtful resistance' isn’t productive, Jenny Odell proves that it is utterly necessary.” —Cory Doctorow, author of Radicalized

“Jenny Odell breaks through the invisible yoke that binds twenty-first-century first-worlders to our app-driven devices. With a thoughtful look at the attention economy, Odell’s book is a self-help guide for relearning how to look at the world.”
—Megan Prelinger, author of Inside the Machine