Читать книгу I Will See You in Heaven (Cat Lover's Edition) - Jack Wintz - Страница 8

Introduction

We have a deep desire to know if we will see our pets again, and all the other lovely creatures alongside whom we now inhabit this planet. What will become of them after they die?

A friend of mine once told me the following story:

Jon lives in Vermont, where a few years ago he faced the difficult decisions and moments that come with attending to a close friend that is dying. That friend was Jon’s cat, Katana.

Katana was a Maine Coon mix Jon adopted from a co-worker. Larry and his wife, Julie, were leaving Vermont for a new job and home in Baltimore, and they were afraid to take a long car ride with a sensitive cat that scares easily.

“Would you mind taking our cat?” Larry asked Jon at the office one day. Jon thought back to the three cats he’d had before, remembering them fondly, and wondered if it was time once again to share his life with a feline friend.

“Yes, of course,” he said without much hesitation.

But from the moment that Katana came into Jon’s life, she was skittish. Larry had warned him.

“We got her from a shelter, and they said she’d been abused. In fact, whoever brought her to the shelter found her on the street locked under the hood of a car. Some kids playing a terrible prank, I suppose,” Larry explained.

“We named her, Katana. Katana means ‘little,’ in Hebrew.” He and Julie were Jewish. “She never grew to the normal size for her breed,” Larry said.

When Katana came home, Jon’s two kids immediately began reaching out to her. The kids were little, too, and of course they wanted to hold their new cat. She would come near, only to then quickly run away to a corner or under a bed. The kids were patient, and in time, Katana would sit briefly on one of their laps. The kids knew not to pet her very much, at first, just to allow her to stand or sit on their laps, getting comfortable. If they touched her too much, you could tell that the cat felt trapped, and she would run away. But the kids learned. And they learned to love Katana deeply—and over several years—eventually could pet her a whole lot.

Last year, at the age of fourteen, Katana became very ill. She lost a lot of weight and had trouble moving around the house. They took her to the vet, who said that the time had come. So with great sadness, they allowed the vet to use an injection to bring Katana’s suffering to an end. The kids cried and so did Jon. But they remembered her beautiful eyes and how she seemed to understand so well how much they loved her.

“I still miss her when I think about it,” Jon says. “And I know the kids miss her friendship all the time. Katana helped them to see that being vulnerable is normal and just fine.”

I’m sure that most of us have our own memories of being profoundly grief-stricken at the death of a beloved pet. These are not childish concerns, but the mature reflections of loving Christians.

Many of us prefer to pose the question “Will I see my cat in heaven?” in broader spiritual terms. There is more involved in this question than simply wondering if we will ever be reunited with a loved animal. For instance, does God’s plan of salvation include only humans, or does it include animals, too? In even broader terms, does God intend the whole created world to be saved?

As a Franciscan friar for over fifty years, I am familiar with the stories of St. Francis of Assisi and his close relationship with animals, and these stories have informed the way that I view these things. Perhaps you’ve heard the stories of this brown-robed friar preaching to the birds, releasing Brother Rabbit from a trap, or letting Sister Raven serve as his “alarm clock” to awaken him for early morning prayer. I’ve known for a long time that historians have credited Francis with composing one of the first great poems in the Italian language—a poem, or hymn, usually entitled The Canticle of the Creatures. In this hymn, sometimes known as The Canticle of Brother Sun, Francis invites all his brother and sister creatures to praise their Creator—Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Brother Fire and Sister Water, as well as Sister Earth, our mother, with all her various fruits and vividly colored flowers.

Some thirty years ago I came to the conclusion, which I’ve never abandoned, that St. Francis came to see that all creatures form one family of creation. Maybe that conclusion is obvious to you, but for me this idea dawned quite gradually. The conviction has grown stronger and stronger, and this book has grown out of that conviction, and explores the implications of it. What would it mean if all creatures were one family? How would it affect us? How would it change our understanding about God, and about how we relate to God and to each other?