My cats aren’t fond of cold temperatures, still it has to be pretty chilly for them to refrain from their daily venture outside. However, when it gets below freezing, not only do they insist on staying inside, they hunker down in the coziest spots they can find and the nearer to my husband or me, the better.
I wasn’t surprised when my most adventurous cat, Mac, decided he wanted to go outside just before sunset on a recent brisk winter day. I knew that once the sun sank below the horizon, he’d be crying at the back door, so I got on with my nightly routine of making dinner.
When dinner was ready I called my husband in his upstairs office to come join me.
“Where is Mac?” he said.
“I thought he was with you?”
“Nope, not with me.”
As I heard his words, an ominous feeling came over me.
“Oh no, I let Mac outside over two hours ago and he hasn’t come back to be let in!”
My husband, an unflappable, anti-alarmist, put the situation into perspective—his perspective, that is.
“Mac’s fine. You know how he is. There’s probably some other cat out there he’s hanging out with. He’ll be back anytime.” He then proceeded to casually nibble away at his beef stew and read the paper, without a care in the world.
My perspective on the situation was much different—and it certainly inhibited my ability to leisurely enjoy a hot cooked meal. It wasn’t that what my husband said was untrue, it was just that he’d left one massive detail out of his theory. Yes, it was normal for Mac to hang out with neighborhood cats in the yard after dark, in the summertime—not on what was to be a record cold night with temperatures dropping into the 20s.
Anyone who owns a cat, knows the limits of their influence over their pet. We have rehabilitated Mac from a skittish stray terrified of humans, to a loving and attentive domestic companion. But when it comes to coming inside from the outdoors, he has his own rules. And I have my own futile reactions to them.
“Even if you find him, he’s not going to let you pick him up,” my husband said as I put on my boots and coat, “and he’ll hide from you.” I knew that too, but I couldn’t stop myself. I had to do something.
I came in from the frigid night defeated. There was no sign of Mac anywhere. Patience and prayer were my only options, so I set myself up in view of the back door, ready to let him in the moment I saw his furry little face in the glass. Over the next two hours, I prayed to my Angels to deliver my kitty safely home, as I watched the clock tick, the temperatures drop, my faith wane and my anxiety grow. Now, even my cool, calm and collected husband was showing signs of concern, peering out the back door and calling his name.
Just then the neighbor texted. “Hey, your car’s emergency flashers are going off in the driveway. Everything OK?”
Everything was more than OK. Inside the car, we found our Mac meowing his heart out to be rescued.
“Wow, Mac is lucky those flashers went off,” my husband said. “We wouldn’t have found him until morning.” Again, there was an obvious detail left out of his perspective of the situation, which caused me to ask him a question.
“How did a little 7-pound kitty push the emergency flasher button on the car dashboard? I mean really, what are the chances?”
“Just luck I guess,” he replied.
Later my husband developed the theory that Mac had jumped into the car six hours earlier that day, when my husband had opened the back hatch to unload groceries. It had been just long enough for one curious kitty to sneak inside. In Macs efforts to get out, had used just enough force with his paw, in just the right place on the dash to set off those emergency lights. Plausible? Yes.
Or maybe, it was Divine Intervention courtesy of both Mac’s Angels and mine, who worked together to bring him in on a cold winter night, in answer to his anxious owner’s prayers.
What’s my opinion as to who actually pushed the emergency flasher button? An Angel of course!
Copyright Maria Hart 2018