47°F at, 7:36 AM Feels like 48° sunny, Hi 73° | Lo 42°
At church today we welcomed our pastor back. He had been on a forced “time out” following things that were said in his sermon on September 29. Which was the Sunday before we arrived in Texas, so we have no first hand knowledge of what was said. I only know that it upset a lot of people and a call was made to the bishop.
This Sunday was a very mild retelling of the visit of the magi. Watch It here.
After worship and Sunday school, we went with some friends to Cherry Creek Catfish. Ella had found a coupon for a buy one get one free. I was in too much pain to enjoy my meal and brought most of it home. The pain in my back and abdomen is becoming much harder to deal with.
The following story is titled How to Name a Cat.
We lived in a house too small . A house built for two, and we were more.
I needed an office space that I didn’t have to rent. My publishing business could be run as easily from a home office as from the office space it currently occupied. All I needed was space for my equipment: computers, printers, copier, light table, files, and more files. But we lived in a house too small.
We found a house. A big house. An old house. A house with a basement room with an outside door. An office space where my sales staff could come and go without interrupting life in the home. We bought a house.
The house was Victorian architecture built with huge red, Colorado sandstone in 1890. Although It was now in Des Moines, at the time it was built newspaper stories about it wondered, “Why would anyone want to live so far outside the city?”
Although it was no longer surrounded by field and forest, we soon discovered that there were wild creatures who wanted to share our home, mice.
We needed a cat. A tomcat. An old cat. A cat wise in the ways of mice. We needed a hunter. A slayer of mice.
Having overheard that I wanted a cat, our daughter, knowing of a person who sold cats, brought us two female kittens. Kittens raised in a cage. A cage in which they’d lived most of their lives. A cage that they were afraid to leave. Two scaredy cats.
Two kittens ignorant of mice and their ways. Kittens, not cats. Not what I wanted. I couldn’t send them back to that pet mill from which they’d come.
Names. They needed names. I don’t really know why people give names to cats. Cats seldom come when you call their names. They may come when you say, “Kitty, kitty, kitty” and have food for them. Or they may just lift their head from where they lay curled in the sun, and stare at you with the most dismissive of looks.
But we feel the need to name them. It is our God given duty to name the animals. Read Genesis chapter two and verses nineteen and twenty, if you don’t believe me. Names. They needed names.
The black cat was easy to name. Aren’t all black cats named Midnight? The grey tabby cat … what to name the grey tabby? Something to match her personality. Crazy Cat? Kitty Retardo? Skittish Kittish?
It happened when my son and I were sitting at the table in the kitchen. The kitchen was one of only three rooms in the house without carpeting. The other two being bathrooms. So, there we were sitting and pondering names. That was when the grey tabby made an entrance. I don’t mean to say that she came into the room. I mean to say she made an entrance. And it was an entrance that we recognized. We had seen that entrance many times. On TV. On Seinfeld. The kitten came sliding sideways into the kitchen and them did a little twitch and looked at us expectantly.
Kramer! It was obvious that this kitten’s name was Kramer.
God bless and g’nite
- ©2020 Thomas E Williams
husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, and Santa
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