The Rabbit and the Cat Shall Dwell Together

Warning: Graphic Words
about the Death of an Animal

Chain Link Fence

     I slept in this morning until 8:07. I woke up at 4:30 AM and debated about getting up and getting a jump on the day. But “getting a jump on the day” lost and I went back to sleep. Woke up two more times but turned over and drifted off again. Finally Zach meowed and prowled and jumped on then off then on then off the bed until I finally got up at 8:07. I tossed a snack on his plate which he gobbled up and then I opened the door and watched him jet out into the yard. He grew up outside before I acquired him, and so the great outdoors is always calling his name.

     I made my coffee, took my synthroid pill, turned on the TV up to full blast so I could hear it from wherever I was in the house (my poor neighbors), took a shower, ate cereal, and finished grooming.

     The phone rang. T. called to tell me her daughter (an adult just a bit younger than me) died last night. T’s daughter has been bravely fighting cancer, and T. has been by her side through it all. How devastating and unbelievable it must all be for T. as she faces the next minute, hour, day, week, and years without her daughter.

    Soon I was out the door and off to get my nails done. I get acrylic nails. The nail experts always want to put “tips” on my poor, short nails, but I say “no,” and explain that I play the guitar and work in a hospital…… “OK” they say, but I feel they secretly think I’m stupid for not having beautiful, long nails. I am a serial nail biter. I am addicted to biting my nails. I am a nail-bite-aholic. I should be in a nail-biters support group. Instead I pay nearly $20.00 every two weeks to cover up my nail biting addiction. And so I waltzed out of the nail shop with new, great looking, fake, “I’m Really Not a Waitress” red nails.

     Then I was off to eat lunch with a good friend. We had previously agreed to split a salad, but once I got there I backed out of the salad deal and got a huge, tasty, high-fat, high-calorie lunch while I watched my friend eat her healthy salad. It’s always good to spend time with her. We love talking and sharing. We just don’t get to do it often enough.

     From there I dropped by my office to pick up a few things, then drove over to Tractor Supply and bought a BIG bag and a small bag of bird seed. I was wearing my jeans and a pretty sweater and my black, girly boots. I felt like a middle-aged-girly-woman-cowgirl as I carried around both bags of bird seed on my own—no buggy. Of course I was about to die, but I didn’t let on as I stood in line holding onto my bags of seed. What was I trying to prove, I wondered to myself? And to whom? I wondered again. Like they, whoever they are, care that I can “be a man” by carrying the big bird seed bags to the counter and then out to my car. I made sure I clicked my boots hard on the floor of Tractor Supply as I strolled out the door wagging the seed bags over my arms.

     After a quick run into Mardel’s I then drove over to Sports Academy to look for some new exercise tennis shoes. Another friend met up with me there and we sat down in the shoe department and talked for about 20 or so minutes. It was a good talk. She has gone through  a lot and is growing so much in herself and in the Lord. After she left I clomped around in my boots looking for the perfect shoe. There seemed to be only 168 different tennis shoes to choose from. I pushed in and out and around the 100 people and their buggies in the narrow shoe isles. I tried on several pairs. Finally I realized that I was tired and hungry, so I got up and left.

     It was 4:30ish when I gladly got home. Zach was on the deck eagerly awaiting my arrival so he could get inside and get warm. Even though the temp got up to 47 today, the snow still clung to a good amount of my backyard. I changed clothes and got into my hiking boots and took bird seed out to replenish the feeders.

     As I was filling the feeder in the backyard, I noticed what looked like an animal against the chain-link fence. I put my seed down and looked closer to find it was a dead rabbit who had poked himself through one of the holes of the fence and then got stuck and then got partially eaten. It was like a horror show. It was awful. Rabbit fur was everywhere. I could not allow his little partial body  to remain like that—suspended in the chain-link fence, half in my yard and half in the neighbor’s yard. As I went to get gloves, plastic bags, and a shovel, it dawned on me why Zach didn’t eat his cat food when I let him inside the house. He’s always starved for his supper. Can’t wait. But today when I let him in, he passed his plate with not a glance and went straight to the guest room floor heat vent.

     I held my breath as I worked to get the rabbit unstuck. In his anxiety, fear, and desperation to get himself free, he had gotten one of his back legs whoppy-jawed through another hole of the fence. That was his problem. His midsection had gotten stuck in the fence and then, in his panic, he had jerked his back leg in and through another hole which guaranteed his prison sentence on death row. As I pulled his big rabbit body loose and bagged him, I grieved what I imagined he went through before he died. I hope he died of a heart attack before the mauling. I was sure Zach had killed him. There is always the possibility the rabbit was chased and mauled at night and Zach discovered him this morning. Regardless, I was pretty sure Zach had played a big part in the rabbit’s chase, imprisonment, and death.

     I buried the rabbit in my back yard. I felt he deserved a proper burial since he suffered such a horrible death. Even though it was cold outside, I was sweating as I finished the last of the burial. I then went inside to wash up. Zach was resting over the heat vent in the guest room. I stood at the doorway of the guestroom and shouted at him. “HOW COULD YOU HAVE DONE THIS, ZACH?!” He looked up at me and meowed. “NO! NO! HOW AWFUL! NO!” I shouted louder. Then I made a loud noise hitting the closet door. Zach meowed and ran under the bed. Then he ran past me into the kitchen and then in the den meowing. He was terrified of me. Finally he hid under the bed again as I continued to shout at him.

     I collapsed into my desk chair and wept aloud for a long while. I wept for the rabbit—all the fear and horror he may have felt. I wept for the unfairness of getting trapped in the fence. It was obvious he had desperately tried to get away only to get snagged and suffer a severe death without mercy. I cried and wept. I cried because my beloved cat could do such a horrible thing. I cried because my beloved cat had terrified, tortured, and killed such a lovely and defenseless creature. I cried because a defenseless little animal had experienced such pain and fear in my yard by my cat.

     After I quieted down and washed my face, I darted out of the house and fast-walked a mile and a half in my neighborhood. I went out without a coat and froze for the first half mile. But my emotion and pace finally heated me up enough. I arrived back at the house sweating. I changed clothes and made a Kroger run. It was my last thing on the list for today.

     When I came home from Krogers, Zach was not at the door to greet me as usual. I went into the bedroom where he was. He lifted his head and watched me to see if I would explode in loudness and harshness again. I crouched down next to Zach and talked to him calmly and said how disappointed I was in him . . . how sad I was that he had killed the rabbit. He meowed back to me a couple of times as I quietly talked to him. Then he turned his head under his body, flipped over on his back, and exposed his underbelly to me. It’s a sign a cat gives showing he submits, showing I have the power and he knows it. I patted him on the head for a while. And then I went back into the kitchen and put up the groceries.

      Finally I sat down and  prayed about what I felt regarding the rabbit and Zach. “All creation groans…” came to my mind. Looking it up, I found it’s in Romans 8:22.  The larger context says this:

"For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

(Rom. 8:20-25, TNIV)

     I grew quiet as I contemplated how Adam’s sin affected the fall of all creation—including Zach the Cat. Animals who used to live in congeniality and familiarity together in The Garden, lost their innocence when we did. But Christ died for his creation—that is Christ died for selfish, sinful me; for killer cats; for frightened rabbits; for an eroding, global-warming earth, for dying daughters and grieving mothers; for poverty-stricken families; for sex-trafficking men; for terrorist murderers; for broken Haiti, and on and on and on….. Christ died for this old world full of fury and brokenness and violent natures and sin. And Christ’s death has and will transform us who receive Him . . . and all creation.

     On that coming day of final transformation, Isaiah 11:6 says:

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together.

And a little child shall lead them.” 

     And a cat and a rabbit will play together and will eat and drink from the same bowl.

     Like what I heard on the phone from a grieving mother this morning and like what I encountered at my fence this afternoon, I am sometimes crushed by the loss and depravity I see within and around me. But depravity and death do not have the last word. God’s love and plan through His Son, Jesus, has spoken and that word is “Behold, I make all things new!” (Rev.21:5)

"When the perishable has been clothed

              with the imperishable, and the mortal

                                      with immortality,

then the saying that is written will come true:

             'Death has been swallowed up in victory.

                                     Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, where is your sting?'" (1 Cor. 15: 54-55)

     Praise be to God.