Rest in peace, YoYo

After a month long struggle with an enlarged kidney and related ailments, I made the difficult decision to put YoYo down.

He struggled to get better and we struggled with him. But he didn't get better and his life seemed miserable.

We tried everything: from antibiotics to overnight stays at the hospital, to ultrasound, to enormous litter boxes, to special food, to paying neighborhood kids to care for him when we were away for a day.

In the end, in consultation with the veterinarian and with several neighbors, we felt it was the humane thing to let him go.

YoYo was a great cat, in the long tradition of great cat friends our lives have been enriched by. He was no genius. But that's what made him so endearing, because he reminded me so much of my own vulnerabilities.

It raises again the poignancy of existence in this world, where the best of experiences lead to the same end as the worst of experiences: death.

For those who belong to faith, like me, the only way any of this makes sense is that our present condition is not the ultimate one; that there is, indeed, a future beyond the grave the Bible speaks of, but tells us ooh so little about.

If you are like me, you get more and more interested in that future as the years go by.

When my last cat Boris died (he was taken by a wild animal), a friend loaned me a book written by one of the old Brethren theologians -- and those guys were pretty serious stiffs -- about how we would see our pets again in heaven.

Last night I had a thought -- some would call it a vision, but in the religion business it's good not to exaggerate. Mine was a thought. But it was a vivid thought with a visual image:

When I entered into that future, my cats were there to greet me: Kitty, Balak, BooBoo, Boris, YoYo ... And as they welcomed me, they were all talking, and reminiscing about their various homes we had on earth.

I reacted to this in two ways. One was to reject the whole thing as ridiculous.

But then I thought:

I wouldn't put it past a loving Father who created it all.

Logos2Go

1 Corinthians 2.9 But as it is written: "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him."

1 Corinthians 15.55 O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" ... 58 Therefore ... be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.