In the winter of 1999-2000, my husband and I were serving as mentors in an "urban missionary" project. Anya was a little stray kitten who sometimes came to our window for food, but steadfastly refused to be captured... until one snowy March day, when she came to the window with a newborn kitten in her mouth. She led me to the back alley, where I found four more kittens in a wet cardboard box. I brought them inside and, with the help of neighborhood children, revived two kittens. All five kittens survived in perfect health.
The kittens -- Dion, Yorkie, Slowpoke, Trip, and Froggy -- were all adopted to great homes. We still exchange e-mails and Christmas cards with their human families ten years later.
Anya remained permanently with us because she suffered some health challenges from becoming pregnant as an abandoned six-month-old kitten. She needed a year of antibiotic treatment to cure a persistent case of mastitis, and she has osteoporosis and multiple allergies.
She isn't a very cuddly cat, which isn't surprising since her first human family abandoned her when she was just a kitten. But she enjoys sleeping on her fluffy old quilt, watching the wrens in their nest in the eaves of our house, and playing with the ribbons on my Bible while I'm studying. Her life is good, and she has been our beloved companion.
'Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in�" And the King will answer and say to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.' (Matthew 25:37-40)
Wilmington, DE
