This week I was walking along my street when I heard a loud forlorn meow coming from the ditch that runs alongside our road. As a person who seems to be a magnet for stray animals, I was hoping that this sound was coming from a very talented bird and not yet another abandoned kitten. Unable to ignore the cry, I searched among the tall weeds near the dirty sewer water and found a tiny kitten trying to climb out of the muck. Because it looked so young and wobbly, my daughter and I immediately took the traumatized little thing to the vet to see how to nurse it. The vet informed us that the little fur ball was only 2 weeks old and would need to be given a bottle every three hours around the clock. He handed me a vet bill and then suggested that I look around the ditch to see if there were anymore kittens.

Now, you must understand, I am a dog person and cats make my nose itch. My extensive experiences with them are not warm and fuzzy in the least. I was also slightly resentful that once again I was going to have to put out money because someone else did not care for their animals.

Knowing I would not sleep at night if I did not check for more strays, I searched the ditch and was sickened to find that someone had wrapped the litter of kittens in a bathmat and secured it with painter’s tape. The kitten I found had miraculously escaped. All of a sudden this little inconvenience became my hero! The loud mewing became a song of life and the around the clock feedings a joy!

You may be wondering why I am writing about this event. Well, I began to ponder how a precious life is so often treated with casual indifference or as an annoying inconvenience and even more distressing, many times cruelly snuffed out because of selfishness. Too many of the children of Mama Tara Orphanage are not unlike the little kitten. They are in our care because someone else tossed them aside, some literally on the side of the road. These children who have been deemed a financial burden to their relatives and those whose lives are in danger need someone to stop and listen to their desperate cries for a better life.

I know it costs time and money to stop and love but is that not why we were placed on this earth? To worship our amazingly generous God and Father, through loving others in His wonderful name, is a high call indeed! I pray today that you and I will stop and love those whom God, in is infinite wisdom, puts in our path and that we will give with His perfect love to those less fortunate than ourselves.

May the Lord bless you today,
Cathy Guenard