Cowboy Bob Sorensen
[Originally published as How We Get Our Fabulous Feline Friends]
Many people own pets around the world, as you know. They can be annoying, and caring for them may be tedious, but they get into our hearts and become part of our families.
Animal neglect and other abuse is infuriating for me. Although God gave mankind dominion over his creation, we are to be stewards of it. It is not only because of those biblical truths that I find animal neglect and abuse distressing, but a principle as well:
If someone is going to have a pet, they are making a commitment to the care of it.
Before we get to the history and science material, I want to tell you some personal things.
Domestic cats, like Basement Cat here, are an important part of many people’s lives. How did we get them?
We almost lost Basement Cat. We’re attached, not only for the typical reasons for people who are owned by cats, but she came to us through tragic personal circumstances. Shortly after Thanksgiving in 2017, she became sick. At first, we thought her insulin needed to be reduced. After many veterinarian visits, we spent two weeks thinking she could die at any time. She had to be force-fed with a syringe:
Just hold on for that echocardiogram visit, Cat! So we can find out what is going on with that mass near the heart we saw in the X-ray.
We spent that second week wondering if she’d die of a heart attack before the test was made. Worse, we wondered if we were going to have to say goodbye, but Dr. Cody at Lake Katrine Animal Hospital said it wasn’t time. My wife and I spent time in passionate, even agonized prayer. (While I strive for logic and reason, and know that she has to go sometime, it felt so wrong at the time, and it was painful. This brings my tough guy image down in flames, doesn’t it?)
After one visit, she started acting better and was coming back online. Getting shaved before the echocardiogram, she showed some spirit.
The dark mass near the heart was not found! Yes, the heart sounded strange to the doctors, but the electronics (as well as previous vet visits) showed no sign of difficulty. She still had some lung issues, but those have also faded and the old cat is back.
We’ve praised God, and the fact that he made people so they could use their intelligently-designed minds to develop modern veterinarian medicine and give proper treatments. Some aspects are mystifying about her recovery, and we think that the combination of science and God’s mercy brought about this result.
God Gave Us Pets
Although I simply wanted to share this story with y’all, it’s also there to help illustrate that pets, and in my case, this cat (as well as those who have been in my life before), become important parts of our lives. Our Creator gave them to us for various purposes.
So how did we learn to get in touch with our felines? A pair of Felis catus (the domestic house cat) was not on the Ark, as the created cat kind was quite a bit different back then. Through natural selection, the desire to be with humans, unnatural selection (human influence), and other factors, some big cats became little cats. Breeding gave us assorted coats and sizes. These variations have nothing to do with Darwinian evolution, but instead, are the result of genetic activity. You savvy?
Cats—which inhabit almost every corner of my home—live on every continent except Antarctica. But it was not always so. When representatives of all air-breathing land animals boarded the Ark around 4,350 years ago, Noah’s historic collection needed only one pair of felines. They would not have been anything like modern domestic cats. That breeding pair contained the genetic information to produce the great variety of felines the world has seen since the Flood. That includes roaring lions and tigers and cheetahs (oh my!), the yowling feral cats in your neighborhood, and the indoor cats meowing on my quilts.
To read the rest, claw your way over to this extremely interesting article: “How Domestic Cats Came to Rule the World (at Least the Part I Live in)“.
Excuse me while I whip out my calendar and mark August 17, which is Black Cat Appreciation Day. Do I really need to? Basement Cat gets her ownself appreciated every day!
