Part I

I’m not much of a cat person.  I’m not really much of a dog person either.  They smell.  They leave hair everywhere.  They make noise and take continual maintenance.  After you pet them, you have to wash your hands before you can eat because your cat was just in his litter box doing his thing, and just kicked up poop-laden dust which landed on his fur just before you petted him.  Their food costs a lot – more than some of the food I eat, pound for pound.  They may pee on your stuff, and then it will smell too.  In the cost-benefit analysis, I don’t see where the second outweighs the first.

Don’t get me wrong.  I like animals.  I really like how they taste.  In college I was known for having 17 different kinds of meat in my freezer.  I was a legend in my prime rib.

I’m not eating meat just now, mostly because it is 3 in the morning and I can’t sleep, but also because it is Lent.  It isn’t that I can’t eat meat during Lent, and on occasion I will, like if the fast might cause offense or be trouble to others.  But animals are something I probably consume a bit excessively on a regular basis . . . like six brats for lunch excessively.  This very modest Lenten fast doesn’t earn me anything, but serves to remind me of what I truly hunger for – the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, shed for me for the forgiveness of my sins.  And I suppose I am also reminded to be a good steward of the animals and other blessings God bestows so freely and which I enjoy so much.

Because that’s what animals really are – a part of God’s creation over which humans have been given dominion.  Animals serve us as beasts of burden, as clothing, as companion animals, and as food.  We are told we may consume them, something that happened only after the Fall into sin.  But that doesn’t mean we should do so frivolously.  Neither does dominion mean we may be abusive to God’s First Article gifts.

But animals are definitely not people.  Jim Gaffigan has a comedic bit about the tear-jerking ASPCA ad where a dog says to Sarah McLachlan something like, “That was a bit heavy-handed wasn’t it?  I mean, come on, I’m only a dog!”  The Christian Children’s Fund doesn’t even play on that level.  And then there’s the bumper stickers.  I saw one the other day that said “I love my granddogs.”  How do you get a granddog?  Is that your kid’s dog?  Or is it your dog’s puppies, in which case wouldn’t they also be your plain old dogs with no grand-?  And the decades-old “dog is my co-pilot.”  At least dog isn’t your pilot.  That would be really stupid. (Aside: This is obviously a turn on “God is my co-pilot” like the Darwin fish-with-legs stickers and such.  And for the well meaning folks who would put a “God is my co-pilot” sticker on a visible part of their car I want to ask: So who the heck is your pilot?  It better not be you.  When I’m my own pilot, I usually get lost or even crash the plane.  Even when I ask The Co-Pilot for input, I end up ignoring it and doing what I want anyway.  Come to think of it, it might be best to stay out of the cockpit all-together.  He’s got it all under control, doesn’t need my help, and He’ll get me where I need to go.  And of course, by God, I’m talking about Father, Son & Holy Spirit – Athanasian Creed God.  And if your pilot is a different god, then you’ve got a problem because nobody is flying your plane.  End aside.)

Sure, we can get attached to them.  Ask any 4-H’er who has had a market animal.  It’s all well and good – up until the last night of the fair, up until the auction.  You can tell the first-year juniors, especially the girls, because tears are streaming down their nine-year-old cheeks as the auctioneer is calling out the price of the steer or lamb or hog that they fed, raised, trained, washed, groomed, showed, and are now showing for the last time to the crowd of bidders – and it finally becomes real that this animal is meat.  I cried.  Especially when I put my lamb Gremlin (movie or car, it really was that long ago, and no, I didn’t name him) into the general market pen with eighty other sheep because the buyer didn’t actually want him.  I knew Gremlin was going to slaughter with all the other sheep in that pen.

Seriously, people.  Animals are not people.  Animals are not humans.  Why do we have pet cemeteries?  We bury dead people and mark the place of it in the expectation that Christ will call them from their graves on Judgment Day.  Please don’t mark the place where you buried your cat with a cross.  Because I hope you didn’t also baptize your cat. (If you did, this is something that can be repented of and forgiven.  And this would also be a good time to review what Baptism is, what God is doing in water and Word, and the promises he attaches to it.)

So in summary, animals are one of God’s gifts given freely to people for food, pets, and labor.  They are things for us to be good stewards over.  They are not people, children, grandchildren or pilots, and I don’t think all dogs go to heaven.  Here ends my short treatise on human-animal relations.

Part II

I think I mentioned that I’m not really a cat person.

One snowy November day, there was a mewing outside.  A kitten was on my front step.  It ran away.  It came back through the snowy lawn and mewed again under my light.  It let me pick it up and bring it in.  It had a bandaged wound on its neck and it kept scratching the spot.  I bought a cone collar for dogs, the smallest size, and still had to cut it down to fit a kitten.  It wanted to jump backward out of the cone on its neck.

There were no reports of a missing kitten in the neighborhood, or at the vet, or in the paper or online.  No one wanted him.  Being wholly opposed to cats, every day I said I would take him to the shelter, but was begged not to, and I finally asked the landlord for permission to keep a pet.

His name was Merlin.  I didn’t name this one either . . . I championed for Gandalf and lost.  And though I didn’t name him, I was his protector from the outside, his poop-box changer, veterinarian taker, claw-clipper, and very often his food-person.  I had rescued him and held him even though he had worms.  Having been abandoned, he feared being alone, feared the outdoors, and dogs, and cars.  He didn’t like laps, but eventually stayed in mine for five minutes, then ten, then an hour, then two.  Other laps were not equal.

He grew to 18 pounds, tall and deep, wide in shoulder, narrow in rump with turned-in hocks.  If he were a sheep, he wouldn’t have shown particularly well – a red ribbon.  He didn’t know he could jump as high as he really could.  He was a motor-boater.  Amazingly, he didn’t smell.  He didn’t pee on my stuff.  He never sprayed.  He never pooped anywhere except where he should have.  He loved to play and romp and wrestle.  He was afraid of children because he didn’t know what they were.  He cried whenever I went into the garage or left for work, as if I would never return.

This cat was different from all the other cats I knew – the ones that smelled, or whose noses dripped, or who clawed you to get attention, or who peed on your stuff.  He was my little fuzzy buddy.

I had to give Merlin up.  He was officially no longer mine a little less than 17 months ago.  I had to leave him with the one I left, to whom Merlin was a comfort.  Strange that this was the hardest thing.

Last night I received notice that Merlin died.  Broken tooth, extraction, vomiting, ruptured trachea, dead, aged about 7-1/2 years.

Did I mention I’m not really a cat person?  I’m not much interested in getting another.  Besides, I already had the best cat . . . ever.  17 months and I still miss my little fuzzy buddy.