We must not forget that God has a sense of humor!

El McMeen

In my last few articles for Cross Rhythms I have shared "God-at-work moments" in my life. I have many more of these I want to share with you, to witness God's blessings in my life and to encourage you to confirm to yourself and others such blessings in your life.

I want to digress from that serious purpose for this article, however, to deal with the subject of fun. Where does fun come from? It surely can't be the devil. His idea of fun is to "steal, kill and destroy." (John 10:10) It makes more sense to me that God is the source of the fun. He's got a great sense of humor, along with extravagant love and knowledge of what pleases us. He knows more about us than WE know about us.

My wife Sheila says I have a special appreciation for intelligence in the female gender. (She is at the top of the heap in this area, of course!) All of which brings me to our cat, McKenzie.

We have three cats-Fritz, Scotty and McKenzie. McKenzie was our daughter Mary's cat, and Mary named her. We inherited McKenzie when Mary moved into an apartment with a roommate who was allergic to cats.

McKenzie always was amazing - deft leaping, climbing, opening cabinet doors with her paws to get to cat food-things like that. This story involves our bedroom door.

Recently McKenzie has taken to the nocturnal practice of extending her paw under our bedroom door, and rocking it back forth-noisily-for the purpose of having us let her in.

We responded, cleverly we thought, by jamming the door with a rubber ball, to lessen the din. She responded by dislodging the ball, and brutalizing it in the process.
We responded by jamming a towel under the door; she pulled it out.

Our counter-measures not only weren't working but actually seemed rather pitiful.

I told my wife Sheila that I had to resort to the "scare the cat" approach. The next time McKenzie did her thing with the door, I would open the door quickly, threaten the cat and thereby solve the problem.

That night the cat pulled on the door, I yanked open the door, and yelled at the cat. She arched her back and slunk away. I declared victory, and went back to bed, feeling smug.

The next night I heard a sound near the door, and went over preparing to reinforce the message to McKenzie. When I opened the door, there was no cat. Hmmm. I must have mistaken the sound of our heating system for the cat. It was 3 AM, so I went back to bed. Shortly thereafter, I heard the sound again. I went to the door, and there was no cat.

Something was suspicious. I went back to bed. The third time I heard the noise, went to the door, and there was no cat. This time, however, I went outside the door, and there was the cat, hiding in the corner! At this point, I burst out laughing. The issue clearly had become a power struggle. It was a human-with Biblical power and dominion over the earth and its inhabitants-versus a small (albeit very attractive) pussycat.

So, I went back in the room, and lingered by the door, waiting for the cat's next move. After a seeming eternity-it was, after all, 3 AM-I heard the cat. I said to myself "aha", ripped open the door, shook a towel at the cat, and chased her down the hall. At which point, she made a 180 degree turn, and shot past me into the bedroom, through the door I had inadvertently left open.

You know, as the song goes, you gotta know when to hold 'em, and when to fold 'em. I had forgotten the cardinal rule regarding cats: they don't have owners; they have Staff.

I guess we'll just leave the darned door open from now on..