Where the Lion Lies Down, Heaven Is

Charlie has not left.

I’ve never had a cat in my life before. My father had a bad allergy and didn’t like pets anyway, and then I married a man who was allergic. But cats keep dropping into our lives.  Charlie is the first one who’s stayed– on the porch, where she can’t make Michael miserable. All I did was put a blanket in a box, and put out some food and water until she felt like going home to the Artful Dodgers. But she did not go home. She stays on the porch. She hisses at other strays who come by, establishing her territory, so now instead of a whole pride of feral cats stalking near the property, I have one cat who thinks she’s part of the family. I haven’t had to set a mousetrap in weeks. When I go out to the garden, she joins me and suns herself on the patio. When I sit on the steps, she takes ownership of my lap, and promptly falls asleep there.

The only inconvenience to all of this is that I’ve got to stop her from running into the house every time I open the door.

Last week I went over to the Dodgers’ house, to explain to them that I hadn’t meant to kidnap their pet. I was afraid they’d be upset that Charlie won’t go back to them, but they all just grinned at me. They were quite happy to know that Charlie is still theirs, but now they don’t have to clean up after her.

“The cat is yours, and I’m just the cat’s eccentric aunt,” I said.

“I’ll be the cat’s cousin!” said Jimmy’s boy, and that’s how I found out I was part of a family.

I’ve always desperately wanted to be part of a family that didn’t see me as a burden. I thought the family would come from the Church, but the Church hates me.  A family has only come to me as I’ve given up the struggle to conform with Steubenville’s notion of a “good Catholic.”

On Saturday, Jimmy’s boy and the Artful Dodgers came to see if I had any snacks. We sat on the lawn, munching frozen chocolate-covered strawberries, with Lady Mcfluff the guinea pig munching grass under her laundry basket and the cat surveying us by the haunted house. As we ate, we planned our Easter party. The Dodgers and Jimmy’s Boy and the youngest two of the Baker Street Irregulars are going to come to my house for a backyard easter egg hunt on Monday. Adrienne and I have been squirreling away candy and plastic eggs since March. I made the older children promise to watch the little ones and make sure everybody gets an equal number of eggs.

“On Friday– that’s the day we think about Jesus dying on the cross– you’ll have the day off school, but I’ll be hiking. On Saturday when Jesus is in the tomb, I’ll be going to church in the evening. And on Sunday, the day we think about Jesus rising from the dead, you’ll be in church and having Easter with your families. So we’ll have our Easter on Bright Monday. That’s the day after Easter, but it’s still Eastertime.”

The children, who are miscellaneous American Protestants and go to the non-denominational church on the next block, nodded in agreement.

“Jesus is going to rise from the dead on Sunday,” said the little girl Dodger, the one who thinks Jesus lives on the moon.

There is no need to proselytize or correct anyone’s theology, in this new life I’m discovering. There is only the obligation to stand in awe of the Resurrection, and then celebrate it with a party.

I have tried to be a saint by pretending to be somebody else, and failed. I have to be myself. The only Jesus I could ever commune with is the One Who died and rose from the dead here, in the real world where I am. I tried to find Him in a vicious cult that lied about the world. I lost everything, and broke, and fell into a dark corner of Northern Appalachia, where I’m learning to find Christ again. The children are teaching me.

As I carried the guinea pig inside that evening, I had to step carefully. Charlie was running figure eights around my legs. She is far too interested in the pig.

Later in the week, as I left the house to run errands, Charlie darted into the door and nearly got smashed by it. I apologized profusely. I pulled her out of the foyer and gave her a cat treat from the stash by the door. I reminded her that she is an OUTDOOR barn cat, and she’s not to meddle with the rodent in my living room. I locked the door as I shut it, and left.

I went to the chapel in the old hospital. I knelt in front of the Blessed Sacrament, and had my usual cry, and hoped God wasn’t offended with me.

I picked up Adrienne from the middle school and took her to run errands. We took too much time to admire the Easter candy and drove home the long way. Somehow, we were out of the house for hours. When we came back, I saw that the front door was open.

I’d not shut it carefully enough when I was fussing over Charlie. The door was now hanging wide open with the knob locked, blowing in the wind.

Of course I panicked at the thought of my laptop sitting by the sofa, with all my manuscripts on it, and what a thief would do if he peeked inside the door. And then I had a worse thought. I remembered Lady McFluff, helpless in her lidless cage, right near the foyer. Charlie, so zealous for catching mice, always vying to get in. I left the groceries in the car and sprinted up the front steps expecting a disaster.

The cat was on the threshold, obedient to my command. She was lying with her paws out– looking a bit like a lion outside a library, and a bit like the lamb that Christ carries on his shoulders in paintings.

Lady Mcfluff was alive and happy in her cage, sunning herself in the light spilling in the open door, a few feet from the apex predator.

“The wolf will live with the lamb,” said Jesus. “The leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.”

Or perhaps it was my imagination, but it felt like Jesus.

It felt as if Jesus was reassuring me that Heaven is coming to meet me, in the real world, in my trauma and my recovery and the new life I’m discovering.

It felt as if Heaven was already here.