You the Branches, Compassion the Law

“I think your cat hurt herself!” said Jimmy. “She’s holding up one leg.”

He’d just come to the porch to borrow the key again. I don’t even know what’s wrong with his geriatric Dodge this week. He thinks we’re doing him a huge favor by lending him Sacre Bleu, and I think he’s been doing us a huge favor by topping off the gas every time he borrows her.

Charlie the cat, who isn’t exactly mine, was trying to eat the last of a can of Friskies with one front leg weirdly raised. On closer examination, I saw that she’d somehow shoved her front paw through her loose collar and trapped it against her neck.

I’ve never had a cat in my life. I don’t know anything about cats. I like them, but I’m also wary. I was afraid she’d bite me. But I wasn’t just going to leave her like that. I touched her back reassuringly with one hand, and gently guided that paw with the other. She didn’t put her claws out. She didn’t struggle away. I got her back on all four feet, feeling a bit like Androcles and the lion.

Jimmy took the car for the afternoon. Adrienne and I went around the back to the garden, to plant a grape vine.

The grape vine that Jimmy’s boy brought me last fall didn’t make it through the winter, which made me feel guilty. I’d told him that by the time he was in the third grade, there would be grapes to put in his lunch. So when I was grocery shopping, I picked up a new bare root grape and brought it home. It was a green grape, the closest I could find to the golden ones my grandfather grew in that perfect garden of his. Adrienne dug the hole while I weeded the strawberry patch. She knocked some sand from the turtle sandbox into it, because grapes like wretched, sandy soil. She backfilled around the vine, and I prayed.

There is a fear I carry with me, and I guess I always will: that I am not a good branch, and I will be thrown away and burned.

As soon as we got that branch into the ground, it rained, and it went on raining. Michael got caught in a torrential downpour on the walk back from his night shift. I woke up to a warm, green jungle of a world, with the grass springing back to life and a crop of tiny sunflower seedlings popping up where the seeds fell last year.

Jimmy’s boy came over to watch me pull weeds– carefully, digging up the dandelions and yanking that crabgrass, leaving the sunflowers and the violets where they are for now. I’ll cover them before the frost next week and transplant them to the front yard flowerbed as soon as Jimmy cuts down those trees shading the porch.

Jimmy’s boy marveled at the grape planting and the baby sunflowers. He examined the strawberry runners and asked when the fruit would come.  Then he told me that he’d seen Charlie, with some kind of paper plate stuck around his neck.

“I took it off so she could breathe,” said Jimmy’s boy.

I ran around the side of the house, but the cat was gone.

That night, the rain came back, and so did the cat. When I opened the door to send Jimmy’s boy home for supper, she was up on the porch, bumping against my legs, mewing softly. I saw that a tip of one ear was missing, freshly cut, and I thought she’d been in a fight. But then she laid down on her side. I saw the red line on her freshly shaved belly.

I’ve never had a cat in my life, so I got on the phone to consult with friends. That was how I found out about the Trap-Neuter-Release program for feral cat populations. Some kind person had rounded up Charlie, spayed her, given her her shots, tipped the ear and set her free. The paper plate was to deter picking at the stitches.

I thought an animal who’d just been subjected to a trap and a major surgery would be panicked and vicious, ready to bite. But all Charlie wanted was some company. She curled up on my lap and stretched out her feet– claws in, claws out, claws in.

“I’m sorry you’ve had a bad time,” I said, stroking her between the ears. “But I’m glad you knew you could come to me. You’ll feel better soon.”

She snuggled down into the space between my crossed legs, head on one thigh, bright green eyes half open. I stroked her side, far above the shaved spot, and that was when I felt the purr.

We sat outside for an hour, as the sun set behind the gray clouds and the world went from blue to black.

I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

I used to be so certain of a long, exacting list of rules and regulations which a vicious, cultlike sect of Catholicism had chained to my ankle. I came to Franciscan University to serve Jesus, and had my spirit burned beyond recognition by that cult. Now I’m old, poor, traumatized, lonely, and unsure of anything. The only rule I know, is to be kind to whatever comes to you. The only God worth my time, is a God who ordained that rule, because God Godself is kind to whatever comes to God.

Maybe I was wishful thinking.

Maybe I was praying.

Maybe God was holding a small, mewing me, saying “I’m sorry you’ve had a hard time. But I’m glad you knew you could come to me. You’ll feel better soon.”

This is my father’s glory.

I couldn’t let the cat inside because of Michael’s allergies and Lady Mcfluff, but I made Charlie comfortable with a blanket in a box, an extra can of fish and a bowl of milk. She was happily eating when I went inside.

The rain picked up again, lashing the world all around me, pouring out on the just and the unjust, the weeds and the vines and all the world.

And it was night.