Wednesday January 28, 2009
Open doors
Our cat Joey has an obsession with doors. If a door opens, he has to dive through it.
When we got Joey, we were told he was an indoor cat. For the first few weeks, he was. Moving to a new home at the age of five traumatized him, I suppose. He slunk around under the furniture. He hid himself among the pillows on our bed.
Then one day during the summer, when our doors were open to the sunshine, he ventured outside.
Of course, the outside was a strange new world. He froze in panic. He didn\’t know what to do with all this space around him, which made it fairly easy to capture him and pop him back into the house.
But that\’s when his obsession started. As soon as we opened a door to go outside, a blur of orange fur flashed to freedom through our legs.
Once he was out, he was gone – until he decided that he didn\’t like the rain, the snow, the cold, the wind, or the cawing crows. Then he clawed at the door, demanding his right to return to his comfortable bed warmth indoors.
Not even a bitter winter persuaded him to change his habits. When the temperature outside hovered around -25 Celsius, when snow pelted against the house, when ice coated the deck, Joey still beat everyone else through the opening.
Except that now he shot back through the open door as fast as he had shot out of it seconds before.
Dead ends
I think that doors have become a kind of addiction for him. He zips through them even when he knows they go nowhere.
If we go to a storage room, in the basement, he hovers around our ankles until we put a hand on the doorknob. The door will barely be open a few inches before he\’s gone through into the darkness.
I went to the garden shed the other day. An orange furball bounced off my legs in his desperate hurry to get to somewhere that went nowhere. (Hmmm… he reminds me of some politicians…)
Had I changed my mind about needing that stepladder, Joey could have been trapped in there for days. But that doesn\’t occur to him.
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For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton\’s Site, or by sending a note directly to ralphmilton@woodlake.com.
It\’s also worth pursuing Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
A friend liked to quote the old saying, “When one door closes, another one opens.” After she suffered a health setback, she went through months of unemployment.
Finally, a door opened. She got a job offer. To work in social welfare in a community in far northern Labrador where, she said later, “The adults drank booze all day and the kids sniffed gasoline.”
She lasted six months. I don\’t think she ever recovered from that experience.
Rev. Bob Thompson talked about a time in his life when he found himself between pastorates. He had half a dozen offers. Some seemed promising. But none of them felt right.
“Just because a door opens,” Bob commented, “you don\’t have to go through it.”
I wish someone would tell Joey.
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Copyright © 2008 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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