Divine and Feline Grace
Animal Stories from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Gracia Fay Ellwood, The Peaceable Table
February 2014

I believe that all animals with whom we interact are messengers from God--an office so exalted that the thought of how millions of them are treated, by people totally ignorant of their mission, is enough to make one shudder. (Kyrie, eleison!) As Shakespeare’s devout Isabella says, “proud man” is “most ignorant of what he’s most assured--his glassy essence, [and] Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As make the angels weep.” Perhaps by “glassy essence” she means that in every human’s innermost being, like a mirror or glass ball, there is an image of God.

Tali napping on my chair at the dinner table.

I have always loved cats, and have enjoyed having them in my life for most of my seventy-five years. They're beautiful and graceful, it's a delight to cuddle them and feel them vibrate, it's interesting to watch their widely varying personalities develop. Two of those I've lived with over the years have helped me become a better seeker of God and lover of my fellow beings, and as it happens, they're both in residence now.

Angelique: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

In the summer of 1994 my friend Doris and I stopped by her mother's house for a few words. On her front yard were two scrawny, neglected kittens, a ginger and a tortoiseshell, mewing pathetically. We offered them some water, but couldn't feed them then. The ginger let us pick him up, but the tortoiseshell wouldn't allow us near her. They "belonged" to the next door neighbors, who had a long history of failing to feed, alter, or otherwise care for their cats. Doris' mother, suffering from dementia and not herself, threatened to "kick them into the next county." I wanted very much to take them both home, but unhappily wasn't in a position to do so then.

As soon as possible I went back, together with my son Richard, taking with us a small doll-bottle of goat's milk. The ginger kitten, to our sorrow, was gone, but the tortoiseshell was still there. She fled from us and hid in a bed of rosebushes, from which it took about forty-five minutes to lure her. While I drove home, Richard cuddled her and fed her the bottle, from which she sucked desperately. The threats of my friend's mother made me think of the passage in Hebrews, "Do not fail to give hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware." I named her Angel, which morphed into Angelique.

Angelique on her favorite spot, the bed.

We knew that an infant so severely neglected would take some time for psychological healing. It took some time all right; now, an old woman of nearly twenty (about ninety in human years), Angelique is still an unhappy orphan. She has a loud, strident voice and a demanding personality: she wants her (vet-prescribed) baby food, or wants her treat, or wants fresh water in her bowl, or wants grooming and cuddling, and she wants it an hour ago, and who do I think I am to be doing other things first? Almost every time I enter the bedroom I’m treated to resentful-sounding, sometimes high-decibel miaows. Much of the time she seems to be tense. and has all her claws out, so that picking her up to give her the desired cuddling is a dangerous enterprise; I've learned to hug her when she’s on the bed without lifting her. If I'm not yet awake when she's ready for attention, she occasionally bursts out with an abrupt, eardrum-breaking miaow that slams into me and practically makes me leap up from the bed.

I used to get some relief from my frustration by calling her Mary Musgrove, after the reproachful complainer in Jane Austen's Persuasion, who lost her mother at age nine and never grew up. But I have stopped that, because I came to realize that Angelique really is an angel in the word's original sense of a messenger of God. She was sent to help me develop strength and patience, to remember that it is the prickly and difficult one who most needs the Divine compassion which never gives up until it touches and releases the sufferer's Inner Light. After almost twenty trying years, I really am learning these lessons, a little . . . .

Taliessin: “Because He [She} First Loved Us”

In the spring of 2008 my spouse Robert and I decided to adopt a kitten from our friends Barbara and Clark, who were taking in pregnant stray cats, supervising the births, and finding homes for most of the kittens. Studying a picture of the most recent litter of kittens before meeting them, I asked Barbara if anyone had claimed that cute gray one who lay on her back making bunny-paws in the air. Amazingly, no one had; she was mine. I named her Pearl, but when she turned out to be a he, the name morphed into Merlin. Not wanting precious Merlin to be any more frightened or lonely than necessary in his strange new home, I also took one of his litter mates, a slim, rangy, very short-haired tabby with narrow black-and-gray stripes. (I prefer solid, rounded tabbies with wide stripes and longish hair, but none were available.) Merlin's add-on brother I named Taliessin, Tali for short.

Gracia Fay's grateful kiss...

In his early years Tali turned out to be a keen hunter, which dampened the faint warm feelings I had for him. But after a time, I made an effort to avoid letting him see how much I preferred his charming, professional-cute-kitty brother; I took the trouble to cuddle Tali and pretend I loved him. To my dawning surprise, he responded as though my "love" were real. As time went by, he became very affectionate, climbing into my lap when I was reading, or eating, or in contemplative prayer, sometimes extending a paw toward me, favoring me with his quiet purr, and cuddling with me at night. When I go out to call him, he will come bounding joyfully toward me as though I were the summit of all his desires. He follows me on my walks like a dog, with many side excursions to check out interesting smells.

To my mind, Tali is also an angel, a messenger of God, demonstrating the meaning of Divine Grace: we are surprised by love we did not ask for or deserve. I used Tali, I offered him a pretense of love--and he responded with genuine love. I am so grateful. I love Tali "because he first loved [me]."

And What If . . .

I believe that all animals with whom we interact are messengers from God--an office so exalted that the thought of how millions of them are treated, by people totally ignorant of their mission, is enough to make one shudder. (Kyrie, eleison!) As Shakespeare’s devout Isabella says, “proud man” is “most ignorant of what he’s most assured--his glassy essence, [and] Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As make the angels weep.” Perhaps by “glassy essence” she means that in every human’s innermost being, like a mirror or glass ball, there is an image of God.

And what if every animal--at least every “higher” animal--also has that glassy essence from which God shines for those who have eyes to see? Of course many a beast, like human beings with ”a little brief authority,” will still carry on in an unpleasant way, “an angry ape” pounding his chest, and we must learn to love them anyway--love them sensibly, actively, persistently. But there are other beasts who, like Tali, are very different, and prove capable of loving us before we love them. Many rescued from the horrors of the factory-farm and slaughterhell system, or other situations of terrible abuse, forgive the species that treated them so satanically. They accept healing, they offer love not only to their caretakers (who deserve it) but to any new person who visits them. Each such animal is more wonderful than a miracle. Each is a bearer of divine Grace.

Thanks be to God for His [Her] unutterable Gift!

Note from Barbara Booth: Hathor, the mother of Tali and Merlin, was rescued from a storage unit business, where someone abandoned her, most likely because she was pregnant. She had five male tabby kittens. One of her babies died the first week. The rescue agency who gave her to me brought a two day old calico kitten whose mother had died. When I presented Hathor with this tiny newborn she smelled her, then looked at me as if to say, "I wondered where my fifth baby went!" She vigorously washed and then nursed the kitten. To see this little calico thrive among her adopted tabby brothers was an appealing sight. So I must conclude that Hathor is a gift from God, as well as Tali and Merlin and all other animals. 

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