ASTRAY

Today, I learn a very good lesson from my sad experience this morning.

I simply feel very sad this morning....

When I was preparing myself to go to work, my wife called me and told me that one of our cat (We called him "Lurik" because his fur pattern has stripes of grey and black) was half dead at a ditch behind our house.
In the beginning I thought that he was already dead but when I pick him up he still responded with a silent meow. We have a slight shower as it has been raining all night, and Lurik was very very dirty.

So I picked him up and try to clean him with warm water to ease him a bit but seems that it was very hard because somehow the water was mixed with oil and very sticky.

His condition is very sad and I think maybe he will die very soon (although I still hope he can survive).

Lurik is a male cat who was born at our home, and his mother was one of the cat that visits our house and make our house a base for her living because we occasionally gave her some food to eat. However Lurik's mother is not a good mother because she was not able to take care of her kittens and nearly all of her kittens die of worm infections and other diseases, however Lurik is the one who survive because he was able to response to the medication I gave. Lurik grows up to be a young healthy cat and show his affection to me, every morning when we open the back door, he always come to me and lies at my lap for about 5 minutes while I pat him before he goes to my wife to look for food. Normally he stays behind our house and we provide a simple shelter for the cats to live/stay.

Some people may ask why do we have numbers of cats at our home, actually they are "not" our pets because we simply were not able to take care of them as they should be properly taken care of. However since we feel pity for the homeless cats, we provide them with shelter and some food that we can afford to share.

But Lurik has one bad habit of wondering to hostile neighborhoods and there are times when he was gone  not at the shelter for the whole day and night, but then returned the next day. But last week he was gone for days and we simply could not spot him anywhere at the neighborhood. We gave up hope of him returning back, but two days ago he showed up very skinny and very sick. He also got conjunctivitis and refuse to take food, although as usual he comes to me and sit at my lap in the morning.

I tried to treat his eyes and put him in a box inside our house so he can rest well to recover but again he refuse even to take his favorite food. We were very concerned about how he will be able to recover without any energy intake? I was thinking of buying a vitamin syrup for him. Please do not ask me why I don't bring him to a Vet, simply because I cannot afford to pay the cost as we are living a very simple life ourselves. Yesterday he was put outside on the sunshine to enable him to get some warmth and fresh air, but then we wonder again and I could not find him last night even though I called him.

As you know the rest has been told. However I still hope and pray that he will survive but the possiblity is very slim and I would not be surprised if he dies although I am very sad to let him go, because I loved him.

Isn't many of us is like Lurik? Although I am not the creator of Lurik I loved him very much and is willing to give efforts to make him well from his sickness, What more is God our creator? He loves us so dearly even we always gone astray and away from Him. God has provided us with what we need but we always ask more things which is not good for us (but we think so) and go look for it in places inappropriate for us and as a result we always harvest what we have done bad and we complain of our condition.

God always wants us to be near Him to be protected but it is us who went away and very often we come to our senses after nearly all things has gone wrong. And still God welcomes us with open hands. There are times when people doesn't have the luxury of repentance because they were not able to survive.

Will I learn the lesson well? I hope and pray the God will provide me with the strength to be faithful.

I hope this true story will bring new inspiration to you all....
God Bless you
December 4, 2014