(Part Two) My Husband Love-Hates My Cat

When a story about a husband and a cat isn’t really about those two at all, it’s about the author and the lens through which she views her world.

Last week I wrote about the relationship between my husband and cat, alluding to what I hope was a deeper connection to the tale of a wounded heart and the beginning of healing. Now that Saturday-Post-Day is here, with every piece of my intelligence, I do not wish to follow through with ‘Part Two.’

Libby, “Oath of God.”

In the recovery of a broken marriage, Libby-cat has become an object of soothing affection. She has been a source of comfort, and a place to practice seeing a gentle connection where there has been deep pain. In my darkness I was given a promise of contentment. Yes, a cat is a strange place to experience a connection with my Creator, and with my spouse. However, her presence here is a story of promise and of redemption.

God’s oath, or vow, to me as I struggled through the darkest months of my year and bonded with my cat was this: Isaiah 54:10, “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet, my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

This isn’t a promise of ease, it doesn’t diminish the hell of brokenness, it doesn’t offer health and wellness; and yet, in the midst of soul-crushing wounding…it shields. God didn’t say to me, ‘You shall suffer no pain, and know no sorrow.’ He offered a connection to a truth that spoke the story of deep-seated peace and contentment. Admittedly, there were more days and weeks and months of complete despair than I would wish on any soul. Days when my body took over and reacted to stress, when I would scream and be blinded by shear pain. And yet. My God redeems.

Psychology believes it to be resilience.

                                                 Faith knows it to be Grace.

When my husband holds Libby she simultaneously purrs and resists. I see myself in that action: wanting so desperately to be held close and needing the affection. At the very same moment not withstanding the nearness and offering complaint loudly. How often I have felt this paradox of stand near me/you’re not safe.

As a daily companion she reminds me of the nearness of God’s grace in my story.

Libby’s presence has given me a place to find joy; the belly-laugh type of joy. She’s given me a place to direct the emotional dissonance of a broken relationship. A place to focus my attention, to practice reconnecting, to observe my husband practice gentleness and attachment where I had lost eyes to see.

Libby is just a cat, she’s also therapy.

Part One

My Husband Love-Hates My Cat (Part One)

She insisted on going outside in the bitter-cold rain; she’s perched on the porch railing just outside of our kitchen window. They’re conversing as he’s tidying up the kitchen. Apparently, she’s requested that he goes out in his slippers and scratch her behind the ear as she crouches in the cold. She doesn’t want to be outside alone. She can’t bear it inside, either.

She’s a tiny thing as far as tabbies go. I rescued her when she was two from the humane society while my husband and I were going through a very painful time in our marriage. I needed a therapy kitty who could love me through my darkest hours. Did I mention that I had also just put my twenty-year old rescue down the week before our separation? So that.

I named her Libby, “Oath of God.”

They met each other two months after I brought her home.

He’s outside in his pajamas in the near-freezing temps. They are lovingly disagreeing on their current situation. She mews that she needs him to stay close. He says it’s too cold, but stays. She can’t jump down because the barbecue is positioned so that she’d have to leave the small dry portion of the railing to get back to the door. He picks her up.

He cradles her like a baby while telling me he’d rid her with a ten-cent shot without question. She contentedly purrs, paradoxically she’s protesting this show of….affection…? And so it goes with them.

He says no cats on the sheets. The same thing he’s been saying for the entirety of our 15 year marriage. Sophie was never allowed. Libby looks at him and meows. He opens up the blankets and she settles into the space between us. Under the duvet, inbetween the sheets. She’ll sleep here for as long as she’d like, he likes the warmth of her.

He calls her fur-baby.

He insists he could live without her, that he doesn’t like cats.

But Libby isn’t just a cat here. She’s become a physical object of philosophical meaning. Libby represents an oath, a vow, made to me by God; she is a symbolic representation of a broken relationship, and one of hope. And yes. I know she is just a cat, too.

(To be continued…)

Part two