Praying With Katie

A minister describes how his cat served as his spiritual guide and why she deserves a place in heaven.

BY: Don Holt

From "Praying With Katie" by Don Holt. Copyright Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2001. Reprinted with permission from the publisher. To order the book, please visit Amazon.com or call 1-800-572-3688.

Introduction
I was unemployed. It was a time of anger, fear, self-pity, and housework.

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It was also a time of considerable spiritual uncertainty. I had been ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1960. For some 20 years I scrambled through several pastorates, none very successfully, gradually drifting away from my inherited Protestantism. The current on which I was drifting carried me into the Catholic Worker Movement and to the office of a Catholic spiritual director. The former gave me a taste of Christian poverty; the latter set me to work on the Ignatian exercises. The combination made me seriously consider joining the Roman Catholic Church.

Enter Katie.

She came to us from the library of the College of St. Catherine, an orphan kitten hidden by my wife's student assistant in her dorm room. Her meowing was beginning to make obvious the fact that some dorm rules were being broken. In a desperate attempt to find her a home, the student brought her to my wife's office in the library.

My wife agreed to keep her "for a few days."

Katie had found herself a permanent home.

When Katie entered my life, I was fifty-seven years old. Without a job. Dependent on my wife and parents. Between religions. And with lots of time on my hands in which to pray and lots of issues to pray about.

Katie entered into my prayer practice just as she entered every other part of our lives. She became for me a spiritual provocateur and guide.

Self-Improvement
Katie never seeks self-improvement. She never petitions us to help her become a better cat.

It probably never enters her cat-mind that she needs improvement.

When she stares at us or snuggles against us, when she follows us around, she does so either because she enjoys doing so or because she wants something from us. She does not use our presence as an inspiration to become a better cat.

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