This past Monday my husband and I got a new cat. New to us, anyway. 

My brother-in-law has a friend who moved and needed to find a new home for his cat. She’s indoor/outdoor, about a year old, fixed and a great hunter. Just what we needed, what with being overrun with mice since Christmas. Which, incidentally, is about the last time we saw our previous cat… 

Just last year, which for me was the perfect storm of health issues, I was diagnosed with allergies to dust – not that there’s any of that around here – and pets. So when our cat didn’t come back I thought that solved the dilemma of what to do with a pet I was allergic to. Unfortunately for me, I forgot a hard lesson learned back when I first married my husband: living in the woods, you either have a cat or you have mice.

So since December there have been mice under my kitchen sink and in the basement chewing into the extra groceries in my pantry. Having a cat, which is much safer around my grandsons than rat poison, sounds like a stress-reliever, doesn’t it?

One would think…

My brother-in-law and his friend brought Striper over Monday, and the first thing she did was run under the table in a corner of the room. Eventually she warmed up and actually walked over and let me pet her. That’s a good sign, wouldn’t you say?

One would think…

After they left, Striper wandered downstairs to explore, which is fine since that’s where the mice are. My sister stopped by and when we went downstairs we found her hiding behind the water heater, at least until she took off…

There was no sign of her for the rest of the day Monday. 

Or Tuesday. 

I can’t say I was too thrilled to have a (relatively) strange cat on the loose somewhere in my house. And I definitely didn’t want her to curl up and die, whereabouts unknown, like whatever I’ve been smelling in the wall upstairs for the last couple months. Ugh! I can tell you, they don’t make air fresheners strong enough!

Wednesday my brother-in-law was back to try to coax Striper out of seclusion. 

No such luck.

Thursday morning we had a sighting! She was hiding in the corner of the closet of my husband’s work room – coincidentally the only room we haven’t gone through during our recent clean sweep of the basement. And she ate some of the food I put out for her the night before. 

Whew! No dead cat; just one that refuses to come out unless under the cloak of darkness. {sigh}

I’ve really been fighting to keep myself on an even keel lately, and I can’t say this stealth cat is helping matters. We’ve been back from Kenya for almost a month, and unfortunately I’m still trying to reacclimate. 

These trips cost me big time when it comes to my health. It’s not easy to manage here – it only takes my jaw being off a fraction of a millimeter to send me into a tail spin – so imagine what 30+ hours of travel will do, not to mention a 7-hour time adjustment! My TMJ doctor told me it would take some time for me to recover, and that was when he thought I was on a pleasure trip – before I told him about the jostling I took over the worst roads imaginable, stumbling into holes during hour-long hikes, running into things in the dark while living without electricity and slinging mud to build houses!

It’s going to take a while to put Humpty back together again.

Not only am I trying to adapt; not only do I have an unfamiliar cat roaming around my house; but I’m also back to watching my grandsons, which is anything but routine. Their dad is in the hospital 2 hours away, waiting for a heart transplant and my daughter is trying to balance that with returning to teaching this week. And I wonder why I’m having a hard time holding it together these days… 

I began asking God what he had to teach me through this scaredy-cat I have holed up in my house and this morning He revealed it to me:  

I am the cat! 

Neither of us travels well and honestly, curling up in a corner and hiding doesn’t sound all that bad to me right now. As a result of this recent revelation, I’ve decided to do for myself what I’ve done for the cat and cut myself a little slack! I’m giving myself the month off to get reacclimated, and if that’s not enough I’ll give myself more time.  

So if I can string a few sentences together – like today – I’ll have a post. If I can’t – like the past week – I won’t.

I’ll do what I can and not beat myself up about what I can’t.

I’ll keep my eyes fixed on Jesus and when life gets overwhelming, I’ll pull in even closer. You see, it’s Him that I work for.

I couldn’t ask for a better boss!

Where do you need to cut yourself some slack?

~Lisa