The Cat, The Rabbit, and Christianity

Charlie the cat belongs to the Artful Dodgers, but I pretend not to know this.

The Artful Dodgers, as you recall, are the family that live down the alley on the other side, in the worst rental on the block. They’re the poorest family around and I pretend not to notice. At some point, the gaggle of skinny children bonded with two stray gray and white kittens and put collars on them, but I don’t think they can afford to feed them very well. Charlie Chaplin is the big cat with a dark mustache under his nose, and he comes yowling at my door every morning; if i don’t run out and feed him something, he climbs onto the porch roof and creeps at me through the window. Buster Keaton, also known as Sparkles the Disaster Cat, comes for a snack once or twice a week, but Charlie comes daily. I know that the Artful Dodgers are having a bad week when Charlie is particularly frantic, and when Sparkles is with him. He’s been frantic for quite a few days at a stretch.

We ourselves have had an extremely tight several months. Michael started a new job in March, which will cover several of the biggest gaps in the budget, but January and February were a mess and it will take a bit to dig out. Some days, I gave Charlie the good Friskies cans. Some days I gave him the dollar store cans that cost a few pennies less. Once or twice I shared the cans of chicken I got from the food pantry, because there wasn’t anything left. I poured extra water on it because he likes broth and gravy best. But I couldn’t just give him nothing.

Charlie and Buster have been coming to the backyard to watch me work, just as the human Dodgers do.

Sometimes I have to chase them away from Lady Mcfluff the guinea pig when she grazes on the clover under a laundry basket. They have a bad habit of using the freshly dug garden beds for a litter box and then I have to clean up after them.

The human Dodgers like to run back and forth through the yard, with Jimmy’s boy and whoever else Jimmy’s boy has befriended to play with. That’s the thing I like best about this poor, traumatized neighborhood. No one can afford childcare, so they’ve resorted to the old fashioned method of turning their children loose to play outside until dark and hoping the other neighbors look after them.  The Dodgers  tied a jump rope to the top of the porch railing, and they climb it straight up the wall like mountain climbers. I dream of making the porch into a play castle, or a pirate ship with a rope net to climb on and a big wooden steering wheel, just to give them more fun. As it is, I’m laying up a supply of dollar store soap bubbles and coloring books so there’s always something to do.

The thing I wanted more than anything was to be a multipara with a yard full of happy children. The thing I feared most was becoming a barren old cat lady as my one child got older. Somehow, God granted me both my worst fear and my greatest wish, and I’m happy for the first time in my life.

A few days ago, I ran into the Dodgers at the dollar store. They were shopping with their mother, shoving canned and frozen food and household items into an already overflowing cart. The Mandrake proudly showed me her cheap sparkle backpack from the toy aisle, and the girl who loved Jesus showed off her new cheap stuffed rabbit. I hate the stuffed animals at the dollar store. They fall apart like the garbage they are within a few weeks. Some things are worthwhile buying cheap, but stuffed toys ought to be sturdy enough to be hugged for years.

The girl explained that this was their Easter shopping trip. I smiled outwardly, and cringed inwardly. If you’ve never had small children when you were in dire poverty, you don’t know what it’s like when you get your food stamps and your meager pay once a month, and you know there’ll be a holiday several weeks away from any money to buy holiday treats. So the Dodgers were having their Easter in the middle of Lent. It didn’t look like much of an Easter.

I drove home with my cat food, worrying. More than an hour later, I saw the Dodgers trudging down the alley. The children looked weary. The mother was dragging a wagon piled high with dollar store bags.

I cringed again.  I apologized that I hadn’t driven them the mile and a half home from the store, but I didn’t have car seats to make the trip safe and I only had a sedan without enough seats. If the mother ever went shopping by herself or with one older child, I offered, she could come to me for a ride.

I started to worry some more. And then I started to plot.

Maybe I could have a neighborhood egg hunt in the garden on Easter Sunday, with proper stuffed rabbits that won’t fall apart and fancy Easter candy from a real grocery store. I might be able to pull it off. I could ask the friends who sometimes help with my mutual aid projects to buy me bags of candy. I could check for proper stuffed rabbits at the thrift store. Maybe I could bake cupcakes.

I’m not saying this to show off. I have nothing to show off. I couldn’t even offer my friends a ride.

I’m saying this because I think our souls depend on it.

I think that God actually intends His people to live in the way I’ve discovered by accident. I think some Christians are supposed to be in monasteries or convents, and some Christians are supposed to be hermits wandering in the desert, and some are supposed to be parish priests. But quite a lot of us are supposed to be unlucky families who are poorer than we’d like, living in unlucky neighborhoods and rubbing shoulders with other poor people, and helping one another in any way we can. And let that take you wherever it will. Somedays it will be exciting, and somedays it’ll just be feeding someone else’s cat.

I think we will find that it was Jesus’s cat and Jesus’s stuffed rabbit and Jesus’s family all along.

And besides, it will make you happy.